A joint public warning issued by the “Five Eyes”, a coalition of intelligence agencies from five Anglophone countries, including the UK and the US, said that China-linked spies are using job boards to pry classified information or other secrets out of their targets.
The report claims China’s military intelligence operation is finding people on places like LinkedIn, Indeed and Upwork and essentially offering them gig work, but then pressuring applicants to take sketchier and sketchier work to keep their paychecks — potentially amounting to spying in this case.
Five Eyes claims that those who committed these acts are already subject to “criminal prosecution, job loss, and security-clearance revocation.” The report warned of the possibility of “prosecution under national laws relating to espionage”.
It’s a disturbing new overlap between being scammed and being recruited as a leaker, which, although it can get you a long prison sentence or even the death penalty for crimes against your country, at least has a history of paying well. For example, FBI agent and KGB associate Robert Hanssen received $1.4 million according to the FBI before being imprisoned for the rest of his life.
In contrast, according to Five Eyes, information sources connected through online job platforms are receiving “anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per report”, although the amount can be higher for “increasingly sensitive information”. It’s depressing to imagine what people are divulging to what allegedly seems like a four-figure payout.
These job postings are linked to fake companies, purportedly based in countries other than China, that are looking for analysts with expertise in foreign policy or defense. Targets apparently include people with intelligence and military jobs who must be cleared, as well as “academics, journalists, freelance writers, [and] Think tank staff, the report said. One is an interview, in which subjects are asked questions to find out what types of access they might have. They are then asked to write mundane reports as a test on topics such as “China bilateral relations, the Indo-Pacific region and related defense issues, or international trade”.
Then again, the report says things could escalate. Applicants are told that the customer needs something more juicy, and the communication can then transfer to an encrypted chat platform.
If you’re familiar with low-consequence scams on places like Upwork, this may sound familiar. Gig workers on Upwork are urged to never transfer communications to a different platform where the job board’s rules and guidelines cannot protect them. In some cases an Upwork scam may be relatively benign – an attempt to prevent a freelance writer from getting paid. Meanwhile, the Five Eyes report claims, “Certain types of data could endanger the lives of frontline military or other personnel, undermine our economic prosperity and enable interference with our democratic processes.”
It is worth focusing for a moment on the gray areas outlined in the report. It states that applicants may have no actual access to secrets, but “unclassified information on government policy, or military strategy, capabilities and installations may also be collected and combined with more sensitive reporting to build a comprehensive operational picture.”
If one assumes that the report’s analysis is correct, and that this is indeed a single, China-based espionage operation aimed at obtaining military secrets, then one would hope that not everyone involved would be fired as a government contractor, lose security clearance, or prosecuted. As the report notes, some of this problematic information is declassified, and it looks like some of these applicants are writing boring essays about international trade for a few hundred dollars.
Perhaps the members of Five Eyes are the ones who need a wake-up call here. These are difficult times, so it might be a good idea to pay people well enough that they don’t feel the need to browse side gigs on Indeed and LinkedIn. The security of the US, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia may depend on some increased threats, analysts say.
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