China syndromeNOAA employee charged with giving information on vulnerabilities of U.S. dams to China

A National Weather Service (NOAA) employee is being charged by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) with stealing sensitive infrastructure data from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers database and handing it off to a Chinese government official in Beijing.

TheWashington Times reports that the FBI probe targets Xiafen “Sherry” Chen, a 59-year-old naturalized American citizen employed at an office in Ohio. She was arrested in October and charged in federal grand jury indictment with illegally accessing the Army’s National Inventory of Dams (see “China steals confidential data on the vulnerabilities of major U.S. dams,” HSNW, 24 October 2014).

The dam database is considered sensitive data and has also been compromised by Chinese hackers in 2013, as part of a covert Chinese government operation.

According to the released FBI documents first made public on 30 December, Chen met Jiao Yong, an official from the Ministry of Water Resources in Beijing, according to a series of e-mail exchanges between the two in mid-2012 indicating that she was willing to provide dam-related information to him.

“It was very glad to meet you in Beijing after so many years and impressed with your achievement and contribution to the nation in water resources development and management,” wrote Chen in an email in May of that year, “I am back home now and have been looking for the dam related information you are interested in.”

In response, Jiao stated, “Your email received…Thanks for the information you forward me. I will go through it.”

An FBI memorandum dated 11 July 2014 added that the federal search of Chen’s e-mail was part of a greater investigation of Chinese economic espionage. Its writer, Eric Proudfoot, a special agent at a counterintelligence unit at the FBI’s Cincinnati office, stated that the case is considered a key part of that investigation.

This is in line with comments made by Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency. In November, he told Congress that key networks and control systems for financial and water sectors had been penetrated by foreign states in preparation for cyberattacks aimed at crippling American infrastructure.

“We have seen instances where we’re observing intrusions into industrial control systems,” he said.

Susan Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the NOAA, has said that Chen is serving an indefinite suspension and has been placed on non-duty, non-paid employment status.

According to comments in the e-mail exchanges, Chen alluded to the database information including details on the location, type, storage, capacity, year of construction, and other crucial details helpful in the event of any coordinated strike.