WASHINGTON -- China has stolen data related to naval warfare from the computers of a Navy contractor, U.S. officials said Friday, in another step in the long-running cyberwar between two global adversaries.
The breach occurred this year, the officials said, when Chinese government hackers infiltrated the computers of a company working on a Navy submarine and underwater programs contract. The company, which was not identified, was doing work for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, which is based in Newport, R.I.
Officials said that the data gleaned by China was unclassified.
Navy officials declined to speak publicly about the hack, which was first reported by The Washington Post.
But in a statement, Lt. Marycate Walsh, a Navy spokesman, cited "measures in place that require companies to notify the government when a cyberincident has occurred that has actual or potential adverse effects on their networks that contain controlled unclassified information."
She said it would be "inappropriate to discuss further details at this time."
China and the United States have been locked in an escalating fight over cyber and military technology, with Beijing making rapid gains in recent years. U.S. officials -- from both President Donald Trump's administration and President Barack Obama's administration before it -- concede that Washington has struggled to deter Chinese hacking, and have predicted the cyberattacks will increase until the United States finds a way to curb them.
The theft of the Navy system is hardly the largest, or the most sensitive, of the designs and systems stolen by Chinese hackers over the years. But it underscores a lesson the U.S. government keeps learning: No matter how fast the government moves to shore up its cyberdefenses, and those of the defense industrial base, the cyberattackers move faster.
The plans for the F-35, America's most expensive fighter jet in history, were taken more than a decade ago, and the Chinese model looks like an almost exact replica.
The most sophisticated hack of U.S. data took place at the Office of Personnel Management. It lost the files of about 21.5 million Americans who had filed extensive questionnaires for their security clearances.
But the United States is unlikely to retaliate. To most intelligence officials this is just another espionage case, bearing similarities to what the United States does around the world.
The United States and China are wrangling over trade issues but also jointly looking to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Trump is headed to Singapore for a summit meeting Tuesday with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un.
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to be identified in discussing the issue, said the Navy was investigating the breach with the help of the FBI.
A Section on 06/09/2018