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WASHINGTON: The United States Department of Justice announced on Wednesday (September 16) charges against five Chinese and two Malaysians who carried out hacking operations globally for at least six years to steal identities and video game technology, plant ransomware and spying on Hong Kong activists.
Three of the Chinese suspects operated out of Chengdu 404, a Sichuan-based company that purported to offer network security services for other companies.
They hacked into the computers of hundreds of companies and organizers around the world to collect identities, hijack systems for ransom, and remotely use thousands of computers to mine cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Two other Chinese nationals who previously worked for Chengdu 404, and the two Malaysians, were accused of hacking into major gaming companies to steal their secrets and “gambling artifacts,” probably interchangeable game chips and credits, and reselling them.
The seven together were long recognized by cybersecurity experts as the “APT41” hacking organization, identified by their shared tools and techniques.
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While some had thought the group might be run by the Chinese government, the allegations did not identify a strong official connection.
But according to court documents, Jiang Lizhi, one of Chengdu’s 404 hackers, boasted to a colleague in 2012 that he was protected by China’s Ministry of State Security and indicated that they were protected if they didn’t hack domestically.
“Some of these criminal actors believed that their association with the People’s Republic of China provided them with a free license to hack and steal around the world,” US Attorney Michael Sherwin said in a statement.
The charges did not indicate any direct political motivation behind the hackers’ activities, although they did gain access to government computer systems in India and Vietnam.
But they said that in 2018, Chengdu 404 implemented a program to collect information about people involved in the Hong Kong democracy movement, about a US media group reporting on the treatment of the Uighur minority in China’s Xinjiang region, and about a Tibetan Buddhist monk.
The presentations do not indicate how the information was used.
All seven face a variety of charges including computer and wire fraud, identity theft, money laundering and extortion.
The five Chinese are still at large, but the two Malaysians were arrested in Malaysia on Monday and the United States is seeking their extradition.
