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China's cyber spies have accessed the private emails of "many" top Obama administration officials, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official and a top secret document obtained by NBC News, and have been doing so since at least April 2010.

The email grab -- first codenamed "Dancing Panda" by U.S. officials, and then "Legion Amethyst" -- was detected in April 2010, according to a top secret NSA briefing from 2014. The intrusion into personal emails was still active at the time of the briefing and, according to the senior official, is still going on.

In 2011, Google disclosed that the private gmail accounts of some U.S. officials had been compromised, but the briefing shows that private email accounts from other providers were compromised as well.

The government email accounts assigned to the officials, however, were not hacked because they are more secure, says the senior U.S. intelligence official.


The senior official says the private emails of "all top national security and trade officials" were targeted.

The Chinese also harvested the email address books of targeted officials, according to the document, reconstructing and then "exploiting the(ir) social networks" by sending malware to their friends and colleagues.

The time period overlaps with Hillary Clinton's use of a private email account while Secretary of State from Jan. 21, 2009 to Feb. 1, 2013. The names and ranks of the officials whose emails were actually grabbed, however, were not disclosed in the NSA briefing nor by the intelligence official.

A different NSA document leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that in late 2010 China had attempted to spy on the emails of four U.S. officials, including then Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead. The document, posted on-line by Der Spiegel earlier this year, said the Chinese spies had tried to insert malicious software into their computers.


http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/china-read-emails-top-us-officials-n406046

When US is spying european union country, china have accessed their email. Its a weird world you know. Nothing safe in this world anymore, even our data could be accessed by google.

I find it ironic that the same people who can't hold on to their own data want to hold mine for security reasons.
 ::)

Or that the Americans have been blasted since Snowden for spying and yet every Country is involved in some form or another.

... And for the children.

 8)

The Chinese used to hack all sorts of stuff in the States... and... well everywhere else too. So what's the news about this :)? To be honest I wouldn't be too surprised if next year the Chinese secret service would send me a notification about the coming birthday of my wife :/.

... Only if you have access to government secrets on a daily basis. Pressure point...

That's the fashion of this year :). A couple of years ago in the States some security guys found signs what pointed to a much wider scope, like utility companies, power plants, water distribution systems and such things.

Im under the impression the biggest leaders out there are complete computer illiterates and may use weak passwords, obvious recovery phrasses etc, so getting their actual emails is having half the job done. Look at the Palvin incident. Those guys are complete idiots when it comes to digital security.

Politicians are used to be ignorant old farts who are complete idiots about almost anything except pocketing taxpayers money, and extracting lucrative bribes from companies in exchange for screwing the taxpayers :/.

Yeah, those politicians dont know that they have given a power to company that made them a security system. Its not a big problem for other countries to steal it then if they can pay higher to some person in that company.

by the way, I never know what the name of China intelligence agency is, its the real secret spy imo  8)