Foreign Hacking Is Bleeding IP from U.S. Companies

A report from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center says that foreign actors are stealing intellectual property from U.S. companies through cyber espionage. Three of the usual suspects are singled out, although unspecified “countries with closer ties to the United States” are said to have also conducted operations to steal U.S. technology. “Despite advances in cybersecurity, cyber espionage continues to offer threat actors a relatively low-cost, high-yield avenue of approach to a wide spectrum of intellectual property,” according to the NCSC report, which also notes that hacking is not the only method used to acquire U.S. intellectual property. Foreign country’s requirements to do business, notably in China and Russia, may include such things as security reviews, on-shore storage of company data and, in the case of Russia, a demand for source code reviews for foreign technology being sold inside the country. The report, titled “Foreign Economic Espionage in Cyberspace: 2018.” concludes with a cursory summary of what the government is doing to address the threat, noting that “details of many of these actions are too sensitive to discuss in this publication.”