Eyes Spy Corporate espionage has become


more sophisticated than ever, thanks to technology, new hacker techniques and plain old-fashioned sleuthing


by John Lorinc illustration by Keith Negley


N MAY 3, 2012, A MAN NAMED SU BIN, a Chinese national living in BC, sent an email to a military officer in the People’s Liberation Army that contained a translated version of a flight-test plan for Lockheed Martin’s new top- secret F-35 fighter jet. The note outlined how the testing would be con- ducted, the instrumentation required and all sorts of other financial,


logistical and technical analysis compiled by the defence contractor’s engineers. According to US court documents, Su, who went by the aliases Stephen Su and Stephen Subin and owned an aviation technology company, had been helping Chinese hackers access classified military information and trade secrets since 2008 — informa- tion he later admitted was obtained through sustained incursions into the Californian computer networks of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Those attacks, however, had not gone unnoticed. Aerospace companies have extensive


security systems, and Lockheed Martin in particular has developed a now widely used defensive strategy to counter hackers. On July 1, 2014, a BC detachment of the RCMP, working with Los Angeles-based agents with the FBI and the US air force, raided Su’s Lower Mainland home, seizing hundreds of highly incriminating documents, including diagrams and the translated test manual for the F-35. The 51-year-old waived extradition and was sent to the US to face charges on numer- ous counts, including unauthorized computer access and conspiracy to steal trade


MARCH 2017 | CPA MAGAZINE |


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