US President Donald Trump issued a federal order to close the Chinese Consulate in Houston from Friday(July 24th,2020) this week, as the office was found indulging in Espionage activities on Federal Agencies. The order which was made public on Wednesday this week was being followed thoroughly by the law enforcement as it seized all assets and operations at the office from Thursday.
After the officials at the consulate learnt about the ban, some of them threw all the paper files into the corridor and lit them in flames. And this prompted the fire and police officers to rush to the site to get control of the mishap- only to be stopped by a senior official from Trump Administration for reasons.
Beijing reacted sharply to the news and stated that the action taken by the Trump administration was illegal and could attract retaliation in the form of cyber attacks from its intelligence.
A source from White House claims that the Chinese government was spying on the networks of University and research labs to steal valuable medical research related information and was trying to digitally infiltrate networks related to oil and natural gas firms.
United States on Thursday confirmed the news and alleged that Beijing had turned its consulate in Houston a high-tech communications hub to coordinate and execute espionage related activities.
Mark Warner, the Democrat Senator from Virginia, confirmed the news and added that the Chinese Communist Party was indulging in some notorious activities like stealing information of companies, and research data related to MD Anderson Cancer Center of a Texas University by making Houston as its hub.
Note 1- In April 2019, 3 out of 5 scientists from MD Anderson Cancer Research were fired from their duties as they were found guilty in passing out valuable research info related to Cancer to servers in China. The 4th scientists resigned from the job because of health reasons after the investigation was initiated, and the news about the 5th scientist is still unknown.
What if the Communications hub acted as a static point to hack & influence the US Elections 2020 in state or across the nation…?
Note 2- As a first move to express retaliation, China announced on Friday that it will shut down to US Consulate of Chengdu in South West of China’s Sichuan Province.
The post Donald Trump closes Chinese Consulate in Houston for Espionage appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.
July 24, 2020 at 10:54AM
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