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US accusses China of launching ‘super aggressive’ spy mission on LinkedIn

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US accusses China of launching 'super aggressive' spy mission on LinkedIn

The blame game between Beijing and Washington has taken another turn after the US accused China of launching a ‘super aggressive’ spy mission on social media platform LinkedIn.

That much information was revealed by William Evanina, the U.S. counter-intelligence chief who said Chinese espionage agencies are using fake LinkedIn accounts to try to recruit Americans with access to government and commercial secrets.

He said Chinese campaign includes contacting thousands of LinkedIn members at a time, but he declined to say how many fake accounts U.S. intelligence had discovered.

Evanina said LinkedIn should look at copying the response of Twitter, Google and Facebook, which have all purged fake accounts allegedly linked to Iranian and Russian intelligence agencies.

Read also: ABUSE CRISIS: Former top Vatican official calls for Pope’s resignation

“I recently saw that Twitter is cancelling, I don’t know, millions of fake accounts, and our request would be maybe LinkedIn could go ahead and be part of that,” said Evanina, who heads the U.S. National Counter-Intelligence and Security Center.

The latest accusation is coming after President Donald Trump claimed without proof that China hacked into the email of 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

In a post on Twitter, Trump wrote; “Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!” he tweeted a little after midnight on Wednesday.

 

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