During China’s pseudo-cyber-hiatus, the PRC’s hacking operations get a major overhaul. CCP leadership moves responsibility away from the sloppy, brazen hackers at the People’s Liberation Army to the far more stealthy, and strategic, Ministry of State Security. Gone are the “most polite” hackers in the digital world. Here to stay are the gunslingers – the elite of the elite in their field.
In Episode 6, host and former New York Times cybersecurity reporter, Nicole Perlroth lays out what it looked like as China’s hackers went underground… and what we missed in Eastern Europe as they did.
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32:58
Ep 5: A Cyber Detente
Every U.S. administration, dating back to President H.W. Bush has struggled to address the threat of Chinese trade theft. But a growing sense of urgency kicks in as American businesses start hemorrhaging trade secrets and entire product lines start vanishing to Chinese copycats. Just as the Obama Administration is set to do something about it, Edward Snowden shifts the narrative back onto the United States.
For years, the U.S. fends off its own accusations of hacking. But then China goes for the mother lode. And creates an opening for Obama to strike a deal with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. In Episode 5, host and former New York Times cybersecurity reporter, Nicole Perlroth reveals the ins and outs and backroom dealings of the cyber detente nobody saw coming.
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45:43
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
As Chinese hackers continue their raid of American companies, the threat reaches new levels of urgency, not so much for the sophistication of these hackers, but because of the sheer volume of attacks. And yet, victims continue to keep their breaches under wraps, and the government is hamstrung in what they can say because most everything they know about Chinese cyberespionage is classified.
Then, the Times’ outing of its own breach, and its Shanghai assailants, gives the White House an opening. The Obama Administration decides to indict the Chinese military hackers responsible for thousands of hacks on American businesses. But the naming-and-shaming only sends China’s hackers further underground. In Episode 4, host and former New York Times cybersecurity reporter, Nicole Perlroth explores China’s hacking talent pipeline and how the PRC shifted tasking for its most sensitive operations from slipshod PLA hackers to high-precision, digital ninjas.
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40:18
BONUS: Live Panel with Top China & Cyber Experts at The New York Stock Exchange
For this special live recording of To Catch a Thief at The New York Stock Exchange, host and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, Nicole Perlroth sits down with those who have been directly targeted by, traced, or directly engaged China’s state-sponsored hackers, diplomatically, or in the cyber domain: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Barboza, the National Security Agency’s former Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, Jim Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha. They discuss how the Chinese hacking threat has morphed from corporate espionage to insidious attacks on infrastructure, the strategic leverage China hopes to gain with these hacks, how Xi Jinping views Trump 2.0, and what levers the United States can still pull to salvage what’s left of its cyber defense.
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1:08:05
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
In Episode 3, host and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, Nicole Perlroth visits a welding shop in rural Wisconsin where Chinese hackers have set up shop in a dusty, back-office server. Hackers are using the welding shop as staging grounds to attack a staggering range of American businesses, including a major American airline, fast-growing Silicon Valley start-ups, law firms and research labs, in search of capitalism’s crown jewels: Intellectual property.
Nicole revisits a period that cybersecurity experts now call “the most dangerous time in American history”-- a period in which the blueprints to airplanes, stealth fighter jets, turbines, genetically-modified seeds, oil exploration strategies, even the formula for white paint, were smuggled back to China.
About To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
American companies, whole towns, have been eviscerated by Chinese cyberattacks. But their stories remain untold, even as the stakes get higher and the targets more reckless.
To Catch a Thief is a first-of-its-kind, documentary look at China’s rise to cyber supremacy. This podcast charts the evolution of China’s state-sponsored hackers, from their beginnings as “the most polite, mediocre hackers in cyberspace” to the “apex predator” that now haunts America’s critical infrastructure.
Host Nicole Perlroth, bestselling author and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, interviews those who were victimized, and instrumental in tracking, Chinese cyberattacks as the threat morphed from trade secret theft, to blanket surveillance, to pre-positioning in America’s critical infrastructure. For what purpose? To Catch a Thief interrogates the motives behind it all.
This audio documentary is produced by Rubrik, the leading data security company that delivers cyber resilience for businesses around the world.
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