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Shawn R. Carpenter is a cyber security analyst and whistleblower (previously employed by Sandia National Laboratories) who tracked down a Chinese cyberespionage ring that is code-named Titan Rain by the FBI. He came to national attention when his story was reported on in the September 5, 2005 issue of Time magazine.
Carpenter served in the United States Navy for six years.
Carpenter was an employee of Sandia National Laboratories, investigating security breaches in its networks. However, upon tracking several breaches of Sandia, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Redstone Arsenal, and even NASA, dating back to 2003, Carpenter noticed patterns that began to appear to link the attacks to a single group. He was impressed by the meticulous, voracious, and swift manner (sometimes completed in less than 30 minutes) in which the hackers operated. Such observations led him to alert the federal government of his findings.
The Titan Rain hacking operation was first reported in an August 25, 2005 Washington Post article by Bradley Graham, which didn't mention Carpenter. Graham listed anonymous government officials as his sources.
After informing his supervisors of the breaches, he was told that his only concern should be Sandia computers and to drop the issue. His employment was later terminated when Carpenter disobeyed his management and communicated the information about the security breaches first to United States Army Cyber Counterintelligence Special Agents. They verified his report and later brought in the FBI. The FBI requested a Senior DAC Counterintelligence agent known in the counterintelligence community by the nickname "Doc" to handle Carpenter and lead the operation on behalf of the FBI. For almost half a year, Carpenter was a confidential informant for the FBI before Sandia discovered his actions. Carpenter reportedly felt betrayed by the termination, as he viewed his actions as a service to his country, similar to his previous military service.
According to Carpenter, during his termination hearing at Sandia, Bruce Held, Sandia's chief of counterintelligence, yelled,"[you're] lucky you have such understanding management... if you worked for me, I would decapitate you! There would at least be blood all over the office!" [1] During the subsequent court case, Held testified that he did use the word "decapitate" and, while he did not recall using the word "blood," would not contest it. He also apologized. [1]
Carpenter sued Sandia National Laboratories for wrongful termination and defamation; a jury awarded him almost $4.7 million in compensatory and punitive damages on February 13, 2007. The jury more than doubled the punitive damages requested by Carpenter's attorneys Thad Guyer, Stephani Ayers, and Philip Davis. The 13-person New Mexico state district court jury determined that Sandia's handling of Shawn Carpenter's termination was "malicious, willful, reckless, wanton, fraudulent or in bad faith." Juror Ed Dzienis said, "If they (Sandia) have an interest in protecting us, they certainly didn't show it with the way they handled Shawn." Alex Scott, the jury forewoman, said jurors were upset by the lack of documentation of the process and by the "reckless behavior on the part of Sandia to not have adequate policies in place for employees about hacking, and the cavalier attitude about national security and global security."
Carpenter's wife, Dr. Jennifer Jacobs, testified at the trial. Jacobs, a former Sandia scientist, nuclear engineer, West Point graduate, and Army Reserve Major, said Sandia management questioned her loyalty to the company after her husband was fired. Jacobs left Sandia and was later appointed as a White House Fellow, and was a director at the United States National Security Council. In an interview with the Albuquerque Journal, Jacobs stated, "The point for us all along was this is bad for the country to have contractors like Sandia Corporation behaving this way -- with impunity. And if other citizens don't do this, it's the beginning of the end for our country. That's what we kept coming back to: This is what we have to do, because it's what we expect of others."
As of March 2007 [update] , Carpenter is employed at NetWitness Corporation, a startup headed by Amit Yoran, former director of the National Cyber Security Division within the United States Department of Homeland Security.
In March 2007, Sandia National Laboratories retained three additional attorneys at the international corporate defense firm of Baker Botts. In post-trial motions, Sandia's attorneys unsuccessfully argued to throw out the jury verdict, to reduce the judgment to zero, and for a new trial. Carpenter's attorneys successfully argued a motion for post-judgment interest. During the appeals process, Sandia was ordered to pay an interest rate of 15% per year on the final judgment of $4,742,146.66 (plus attorney fees).
On October 14, 2007, The Albuquerque Journal published a story ("Analyst, Sandia Settle Suit") that stated that Sandia had dropped its appeal of the verdict. [2] According to the story, the judgment had been accumulating 15 percent interest since the verdict in his favor in February 2007. The piece also related that Carpenter continues to work in the national security area for clients in the intelligence community, federal agencies, and the military.
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it has a second principal facility next to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and a test facility in Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii. Sandia is owned by the U.S. federal government but privately managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International.
The Government of China is engaged in espionage overseas, directed through diverse methods via the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the United Front Work Department (UFWD), People's Liberation Army (PLA); and numerous front organizations and state-owned enterprises. It employs a variety of tactics including cyber espionage to gain access to sensitive information remotely, signals intelligence, human intelligence as well as the exertion of political influence via the UFWD through the co-optation of ethnic Chinese diaspora communities and associations. The Chinese government is also engaged in industrial espionage aimed at gathering information to bolster its economy, as well as transnational repression of dissidents abroad such as supporters of the Tibetan independence movement and Uyghurs as well as the Taiwan independence movement, the Hong Kong independence movement, Falun Gong, pro-democracy activists, and other critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The United States alleges that the degree of intelligence activity is unprecedented in its assertiveness and engagement in multiple host countries, particularly the United States, to which various US officials contend economic damages, prosperity and stolen innovations have resulted in $US320-445 billion annually since its inception and activities.
Titan Rain was a series of coordinated attacks on computer systems in the United States since 2003; they were known to have been ongoing for at least three years. The attacks originated in Guangdong, China. The activity is believed to be associated with a state-sponsored advanced persistent threat. It was given the designation Titan Rain by the federal government of the United States.
The timeline of the Cox Report controversy is a chronology of information relating to the People's Republic of China's (PRC) nuclear espionage against the United States detailed in the Congressional Cox Report. The timeline also includes documented information relating to relevant investigations and reactions by the White House, the U.S. Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and United States Department of Justice.
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a United States' federal law enforcement agency, and is responsible for its day-to-day operations. The FBI Director is appointed for a single 10-year term by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The FBI is an agency within the Department of Justice (DOJ), and thus the Director reports to the Attorney General of the United States.
This page is a timeline of published security lapses in the United States government. These lapses are frequently referenced in congressional and non-governmental oversight. This article does not attempt to capture security vulnerabilities.
A data breach is a security violation, in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Other terms are unintentional information disclosure, data leak, information leakage and data spill. Incidents range from concerted attacks by individuals who hack for personal gain or malice, organized crime, political activists or national governments, to poorly configured system security or careless disposal of used computer equipment or data storage media. Leaked information can range from matters compromising national security, to information on actions which a government or official considers embarrassing and wants to conceal. A deliberate data breach by a person privy to the information, typically for political purposes, is more often described as a "leak".
Thad McIntosh Guyer is an American civil rights lawyer with an international practice based in the State of Oregon.
The United States has often accused the government of the People's Republic of China of attempting to unlawfully acquire U.S. military technology and classified information as well as trade secrets of U.S. companies in order to support China's long-term military and commercial development. Chinese government agencies and affiliated personnel have been accused of using a number of methods to obtain U.S. technology, including espionage, exploitation of commercial entities, and a network of scientific, academic and business contacts. Prominent espionage cases include Larry Wu-Tai Chin, Katrina Leung, Gwo-Bao Min, Chi Mak and Peter Lee.
Cyberwarfare by China is the aggregate of all combative activities in the cyberspace which are taken by organs of the People's Republic of China, including affiliated advanced persistent threat groups, against other countries.
Sean M. Joyce was the 14th Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On November 24, 2014, a hacker group identifying itself as "Guardians of Peace" leaked a release of confidential data from the film studio Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE). The data included personal information about Sony Pictures employees and their families, emails between employees, information about executive salaries at the company, copies of then-unreleased Sony films, plans for future Sony films, scripts for certain films, and other information. The perpetrators then employed a variant of the Shamoon wiper malware to erase Sony's computer infrastructure.
In June 2015, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had been the target of a data breach targeting personnel records. Approximately 22.1 million records were affected, including records related to government employees, other people who had undergone background checks, and their friends and family. One of the largest breaches of government data in U.S. history, information that was obtained and exfiltrated in the breach included personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers, as well as names, dates and places of birth, and addresses. State-sponsored hackers working on behalf of the Chinese government carried out the attack.
The Internet service company Yahoo! was subject to the largest data breach on record. Two major data breaches of user account data to hackers were revealed during the second half of 2016. The first announced breach, reported in September 2016, had occurred sometime in late 2014, and affected over 500 million Yahoo! user accounts. A separate data breach, occurring earlier around August 2013, was reported in December 2016. Initially believed to have affected over 1 billion user accounts, Yahoo! later affirmed in October 2017 that all 3 billion of its user accounts were impacted. Both breaches are considered the largest discovered in the history of the Internet. Specific details of material taken include names, email addresses, telephone numbers, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers, dates of birth, and hashed passwords. Further, Yahoo! reported that the late 2014 breach likely used manufactured web cookies to falsify login credentials, allowing hackers to gain access to any account without a password.
Josh Campbell is an American correspondent with CNN, former U.S. intelligence community official, and military veteran. He serves as an adjunct senior fellow and national security policy researcher with the Center for a New American Security.
Cyber spying on universities is the practice of obtaining secrets and information without the permission and knowledge of the university through its information technology system. Universities in the United Kingdom, including Oxford and Cambridge, have been targets, as have institutions in the US and Australia.
Michael A. Sussmann is an American former federal prosecutor and a former partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, who focused on privacy and cybersecurity law. Sussmann represented the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and retained CrowdStrike to examine its servers after two Russian hacker groups penetrated DNC networks and stole information during the 2016 U.S. elections.
The allegations of intellectual property theft by China are contentious in United States–China relations and between the People's Republic of China and several other nations. China is regularly accused of state-organized economic espionage and theft of intellectual property, in violation of international trade agreements. The espionage and theft is not limited to business, but also academia and government. China has repeatedly and vigorously denied the allegations, stating that Western companies willingly transfer technology to get access to China's market. China however also state they are taking steps to address the concerns. In 2019, China banned forced technology transfers.