Chinese "spy" steals NASA laptop. No secrets on hard drive. Only porn

In March, a Chinese research scientist, suspected of spying on NASA, was pulled off a plane by the FBI as it prepared to take off back to his home country.

But when investigators examined a NASA laptop in Bo Jiang’s possession they found no evidence of confidential data stolen from the administration. Instead, they found pirated movies and pornography.

Doesn’t everyone know to encrypt their hard drives by now?

31-year-old Jiang, who was barred from working as a contractor at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, late last year and was fired from his job in early 2013 at the National Institute of Aerospace, was amongst engineering staff labelled a security risk by Republican congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia.

In March, an arrest warrant was raised by the FBI to arrest Jiang, as part of an investigation in to “conspiracies and substantive violations of the Arms Export Control Act.” And on Saturday March 16th, was apprehended as he boarded a flight from Dulles to Beijing, on what wa said to be a “one-way ticket”.

Wolf believed that Jiang might be carrying sensitive information about NASA’s “high-tech imaging technology” with him, according to Ars Technica, but it seems that whatever Jiang was planning for the computer’s contents was unlikely to improve anyone’s eyesight…

According to a court filing today, Jiang will plead guilty to a misdemeanor for violating agency computer security rules.

Jiang claims that he is innocent, and that Wolf is targeting him and other Chinese engineers for political purposes. Nonetheless, he probably shouldn’t have been in the possession of an official NASA laptop, especially if he wasn’t planning to return to the United States.

As it is, this particular citizen of Red China has been left with a red face, and potential legal trouble.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.