Pretty wild. I wonder what its about or if we'll ever get to know. I guess Tildes isn't the place for wild speculation... but a Chinese (or former Chinese) cybersecurity/crypto researcher on the...
Pretty wild. I wonder what its about or if we'll ever get to know.
I guess Tildes isn't the place for wild speculation... but a Chinese (or former Chinese) cybersecurity/crypto researcher on the run from DHS and the FBI... its like the start of a plot from a movie.
My wild speculation; wouldn't be the first Chinese national that has been charged with stealing state secrets or patents or whatever to sell or take back to China....
My wild speculation; wouldn't be the first Chinese national that has been charged with stealing state secrets or patents or whatever to sell or take back to China.
A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer, Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why.
Xiaofeng Wang has a long list of prestigious titles. He was the associate dean for research at Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a tenured professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. According to his employer, he has served as principal investigator on research projects totaling nearly $23 million over his 21 years there.
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As reported by the Bloomingtonian and later the Herald-Times in Bloomington, a small fleet of unmarked cars driven by government agents descended on the Bloomington home of Wang and Ma on Friday. They spent most of the day going in and out of the house and occasionally transferred boxes from their vehicles. TV station WTHR, meanwhile, reported that a second home owned by Wang and Ma and located in Carmel, Indiana, was also searched. The station said that both a resident and an attorney for the resident were on scene during at least part of the search.
...So. This may or may not be related, but I'm a graduate of IUPUI (now IU Indianapolis) and one of my instructors once told us that, if anyone wanted to take out communications for part of the...
...So. This may or may not be related, but I'm a graduate of IUPUI (now IU Indianapolis) and one of my instructors once told us that, if anyone wanted to take out communications for part of the US, the building with our class would be an ideal target.
Anyways, point is that building houses some seriously important tech. My instructor had mentioned there are redundancies for keeping the internet up and running, but our building had a central system for our region that was one-of-a-kind. I don't think the full extent is really mentioned anywhere online without serious digging (again, see the screencap of an old PDF, which was the only mention I could find). Even if that bit was an exaggeration, that article snippet proves it hosts some pretty important internet networks.
And given Xiaofeng Wang's credentials... I'd say there's a decent chance he was involved with managing or setting up those networks.
Again, could be a coincidence and totally unrelated. Just throwing it out there.
New article with a few more details: https://www.wired.com/story/xiaofeng-wang-indiana-university-research-probe-china/ To be honest, it raises more questions for me though. And of course, the...
Pretty wild. I wonder what its about or if we'll ever get to know.
I guess Tildes isn't the place for wild speculation... but a Chinese (or former Chinese) cybersecurity/crypto researcher on the run from DHS and the FBI... its like the start of a plot from a movie.
My wild speculation; wouldn't be the first Chinese national that has been charged with stealing state secrets or patents or whatever to sell or take back to China.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ohio-state-researcher-sentenced-prison-secret-connections-chinese-spy-program/
Yes. I was definitely thinking about that but didn't feel like digging up articles on it last night. Also it sounds like a rabbit hole.
From the article:
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...So. This may or may not be related, but I'm a graduate of IUPUI (now IU Indianapolis) and one of my instructors once told us that, if anyone wanted to take out communications for part of the US, the building with our class would be an ideal target.
Details are fuzzy because it's been years, but there's a sub basement level there that houses some major infrastructure related to the internet and requires government clearance to access. Here's an old screencap I took of an article that briefly mentions some of the infrastructure in question. I don't have the article itself, I remember it was a PDF and I think it was about the construction or opening of the building?
Anyways, point is that building houses some seriously important tech. My instructor had mentioned there are redundancies for keeping the internet up and running, but our building had a central system for our region that was one-of-a-kind. I don't think the full extent is really mentioned anywhere online without serious digging (again, see the screencap of an old PDF, which was the only mention I could find). Even if that bit was an exaggeration, that article snippet proves it hosts some pretty important internet networks.
And given Xiaofeng Wang's credentials... I'd say there's a decent chance he was involved with managing or setting up those networks.
Again, could be a coincidence and totally unrelated. Just throwing it out there.
New article with a few more details: https://www.wired.com/story/xiaofeng-wang-indiana-university-research-probe-china/
To be honest, it raises more questions for me though. And of course, the Trump admin is also called out for their typical behavior.
Dude was probably mischieviously adding random journalists to military top secret noforn Signal chats. 🤷🏻♂️