The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it accused two Chinese hackers of trying to steal the U.S. COVID-19 investigation, as well as other confidential information from companies and government agencies.
The 11-count indictment against Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 31, alleges that Chinese citizens hacked the computer systems of hundreds of companies, government organizations, as well as dissidents and individual clerics.
They also allegedly broke into the accounts of democratic and human rights activists in the United States, Hong Kong, and mainland China. The Justice Department alleges that its decade-long scam was not only for personal financial gain but also for the benefit of the Chinese government.
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“The hackers stole terabytes of data from hundreds of targets establishing themselves as a prolific threat to US and foreign networks,” Deputy Attorney General for Homeland Security John Demers said during a news conference in New York.
Li and Dong, trained in computer application technologies at the same Chinese university in Chengdu, focused on countries with high-tech industries, such as Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. authorities said. Industries included high-tech medical device manufacturing, industrial engineering, commercial, educational and gaming software, as well as energy and pharmaceutical defense.
“In at least one instance, hackers sought to extort the cryptocurrency from a victim entity, threatening to release the victim’s stolen source code from the Internet,” the FBI said. “More recently, defendants investigated vulnerabilities in the computer networks of companies that develop COVID-19 vaccines, technology testing, and treatments.”
Li and Dong’s actions are “concrete examples” of two troubling trends, Demers said.
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“China is using cyber intrusions as part of its ‘steal, replicate and replace’ strategy for technological development,” he said, adding that Beijing is also “providing a safe haven for criminal hackers who, as in this case, they are hacking in part for their own personal gain but willing to assist the state and on-call to do so. “
Demers claimed that China has increased its blatant willingness to participate in robberies through computer intrusions contrary to its international commitments.
“China has now taken its place, along with Russia, Iran and North Korea, in that shameful club of nations that provides a safe haven for cybercriminals in exchange for those criminals being ‘on call’ to work for the benefit of the state, here to fuel the Chinese Communist Party’s insatiable hunger for hard-won intellectual property by American and non-Chinese companies, including the COVID-19 investigation, “Demers said.
China has faced a global reaction led largely by the United States for minimizing and not containing the coronavirus, which originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in 2019.
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China has strongly rejected the allegations and has accused the United States of using the global pandemic to play politics.
China has yet to respond to the charges against Li and Dong.
