Hack a spying tool for China, officials say

WASHINGTON — China is building massive databases of Americans’ personal information by hacking government agencies and U.S. health care companies, using a high-tech tactic to achieve an age-old goal of espionage: recruiting spies or gaining more information on an adversary, U.S. officials and analysts say.

Groups of hackers working for the Chinese government have compromised the networks of the Office of Personnel Management, which holds data on millions of current and former federal employees, as well as health insurance giant Anthem, among other targets, the officials and researchers said.

“They’re definitely going after quite a bit of personnel information,” said Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer of ThreatConnect, a northern Virginia cybersecurity firm. “We suspect they’re using it to understand more about who to target, whether electronically or via human recruitment (for espionage).”

The targeting of large-scale databases is a relatively new tactic and is used by the Chinese government to further its intelligence gathering. It is government espionage, not commercial espionage, the officials and analysts say.

“This is part of their strategic goal — to increase their intelligence collection via big data theft and big data aggregation,” said a U.S. government official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s part of a strategic plan.”

One OPM hack, which was disclosed by the government Thursday, dates at least to December of last year, officials said. Earlier last year, OPM discovered a separate intrusion into a highly sensitive database that contains information on employees

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