Beware, WeChat could leak military secrets

A picture illustration shows a WeChat app icon in Beijing, December 5, 2013. [Photot/Agencies]

The smartphone application WeChat, which has gained considerable popularity among Chinese people, is now at the risk of being unwittingly used to leak secret military information. Wives of the People’s Liberation Army service members could easily release sensitive information, including drills and other programs, in their group chats on WeChat without actually wanting to do so, the PLA Daily said on Monday.

Unidentified WeChat users were caught seeking information on a brigade under the PLA ground force’s 20th Group Army, the newspaper said, by becoming part of a chat group of more than 50 members, including officers and their wives.

In the past when interpersonal communication was confined to people-to-people conversation, military secrets remained confined to personnel and their spouses. However, the increasing use of social media tools such as the Twitter-like Sina Weibo in China, has not only enabled netizens to post information more freely, but also made it easier for intelligence seekers to steal important military secrets of the country.

Creating a WeChat group involving service members’ wives was supposedly an idea with the best of intentions. All that the spouses of the PLA personnel wanted to do is seek “peer comfort” while their husbands were away serving the country. Yet given the poor certification system of WeChat, some spies seeking information could easily disguise themselves as one of the wives of a known serviceman and thus trick them into sharing the schedules of their husbands, which could carry secret information.

Also, the lack of efficient information “filters” in WeChat talks makes it even harder to identify and supervise ill-willed online espionage, with most military-related information embedded in casual gossips.

Banning all such chat groups, however, may not be a sensible solution. Most of the wives of PLA personnel have to look after their families alone when their husbands are on duty. Given this fact, virtual communities like WeChat groups, if put under proper management and supervision, could play a positive role in helping the relatives of personnel.

In particular, local organizations such as neighborhood committees could form supportive WeChat groups open exclusively to relatives of military personnel but only after strict identification. In addition, the WeChat groups should focus on helping members with their daily needs ranging from children’s education to legal consultation. They should also promote a strict accountability mechanism to prevent leakage of information.

That being said, PLA personnel are also obliged to enhance their awareness of secrecy and require their spouses to be on guard while communicating online. More importantly, all related departments need to strengthen vigil on cyber espionage by adopting better keyword filtering tools, for example, to manage social network platforms.

The authors are with the PLA National Defense University.