Hackers Are Helping China Build Cheap Clones of America's Drones

Beginning in 2011, a series of weaponized emails—PDF and Word attachments with malware inside—were sent to people who work in America's drone brain trust.

A cybersecurity group found that the attachments, many of them with benign titles like "dodd-frank-conflict-minerals.doc," "Boeing_Current_Market_Outlook_2011_to_2030.pdf" and "April Is the Cruelest Month.pdf," originated with a hacker group in Shanghai linked to China's military.

Of the 261 attacks uncovered, 123 targeted U.S. drone companies, from large defense contractors to small firms. "We believe the attack was largely successful," Darien Kindlund, manager of threat intelligence at the cybersecurity company FireEye, based in California, said in February.

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