Disclosures by ‘a senior government official’, the FBI and the White House have, over the past 24 hours, shown that a second OMP hack attributed to have come from China has dragged data relating to standard form 86 into the hands of those it was never intended to be.
News sources have described that unit 61398 (the PLA unit tasked with cyber/information warfare) has gained access to the form that asked respondents, intelligence officers and defence contractors to fill out details of mental health issues, financial situation and close family mamners including ‘people who are close to you’. The form can be found here: https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf
Initialy, the first hack on the 5th of June that gained access to the HR department or Officer for Personel Management (OPM) seemed useless and just a matter that would irk the US but the information on these forms is now of strategic use to the Chinese.
Attribution can be said to be probably from one of 3 sources at this time.
1) unit 61398, directly instructed by senior PLA commanders in the military council chaired by President Xi Jinping.
2) North Korea have been know to operate with in North East China and are thought to have recently hacked Sony.
3) Non state actors within China who would have links to those in the unit 61398.
Any of these scenarios mean China knew as the constraints on the internet in China mean its servers are tightly controlled and monitored and Westphilan attribution can level the problem directly with the state in China as being in the know or at least not being able to feign ignorance as to who did it, where and when.
The reasons why China have done this can be explained by China’s desperate and continuous work on proping the CCP and giving continued GDP rises to the Chinese people. The data in the forms of relating to contractors, people known to intelligence officers etc… mean China can remotely look to source engineering plans, defence blueprints and other related info and ideas from places outside US Government such as smaller previously unknown researchers and companies. This will speed up China’s military build up which will in the long run grant it energy and economic security. Ergo: keeping the Chinese population content with gradual 7% GPD rises year after year and the continuous rule of the CCP.
Alexander Dawson 