Obama invokes Cold War-era national security powers to unmask Chinese telecom spyware

WASHINGTON: The US is invoking Cold War-era national security powers to force telecommunication companies, including AT&T and Verizon Communications, to divulge confidential information about their networks in a hunt for Chinese cyber-spying.

In a survey distributed in April, the US Commerce Department asked for a detailed accounting of foreign-made hardware and software on the companies' networks.

It also asked about security-related incidents such as the discovery of "unauthorised electronic hardware" or suspicious equipment that can duplicate or redirect data, according to a copy of the survey reviewed by Bloomberg News. The survey represents "very high-level" concern that China and other countries may be using their growing export sectors to develop built-in spying capabilities in US networks, said a senior US intelligence official who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak on the matter.

"This is beyond vague suspicions," said Richard Falkenrath, a senior fellow in the Council on Foreign Relations Cyberconflict and Cybersecurity Initiative. "Congress is now looking at this as well, and they're doing so based on very specific material provided them in a classified setting" by the National Security Agency, he said.

The survey went to dozens of telecommunications companies, software makers and information security companies, including some foreign firms, according to James Lewis, a cyber-security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, in Washington. Lewis said AT&T and Verizon Communicationswere among the companies that received it.

Several of the companies were hesitant to cooperate because they had learned the Commerce Department unit handling the survey had itself been hacked by the Chinese in 2006, creating the possibility that company data provided might become known to the Chinese, according to a former government official familiar with the discussions.

The Commerce Department refused a request by the companies for specific protocols to protect the data, according to the former official, who declined to be identified because the discussions were confidential. Mark Siegel, a spokesman for Dallasbased AT&T, declined to comment on security issues.

Edward McFadden, a spokesman for New York-based Verizon, said the company had received the survey and declined to comment further. Eugene Cottilli, a Commerce Department spokesman in Washington, had no immediate comment on the survey.

The Economic Times