Is Your Email Vulnerable? Ask the Chinese Military

Image: ribkhan, Pixabay

I’m a current events junkie. I’ll admit it. And I work with law firms. Thus, my favorite podcast? “Stay Tuned with Preet.” Yes, this is Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Check out an episode. Preet takes a few questions about the law at the beginning of each episode. Then he has a guest. Preet is not only smart, but surprisingly personable. It’s a fast-moving hour.

A recent guest was John P. Carlin, former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division at the Department of Justice and Chief of Staff to Robert Mueller at the FBI. He is currently a partner with Morrison & Foerster. Carlin is an international cybersecurity expert.

One of the things which caught my attention in this episode was Carlin’s story of the US subsidiary of a German company whose data was stolen by hackers in the Chinese military. The company, SolarWorld, in Hillsboro, Oregon, made solar energy components.

How was the data stolen? Email. Carlin said, “Email. It is the least protected part of the system, usually. Not like Intellectual Property which is encrypted or where special measures are taken to protect it. They stole email traffic.”

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