The U.S. Department of Justice building appears in Washington, USA, on March 21, 2019.
Leah Millis | Reuters
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department accused two Chinese citizens, working on behalf of the Chinese government, of stealing trade secrets and hacking computer systems from companies that work with the Covid-19 vaccine.
According to the 11-count indictment, Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 33, carried out a global piracy campaign for more than a decade. The indictment alleges that the defendants were able to successfully steal terabytes of data from the United States, as well as from Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The Justice Department said in a statement that high-tech manufacturing processes, gaming software, solar energy engineering, pharmaceuticals and the defense industries were among the targets of the attack.
A California defense and technology company, a Maryland technology and manufacturing company, the Washington Department of Energy site Hanford, a Texas engineering firm, a Virginia defense contractor, a Massachusetts software company, a California gaming software company and several US drug makers the 13 American businesses that were attacked.
“In at least one case, hackers sought to extort a victim entity’s cryptocurrency, threatening to release the victim’s stolen source code on the Internet. More recently, the defendants investigated vulnerabilities in computer networks of companies developing vaccines. Covid-19, technology tests and treatments, “according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
The news came amid a global race to create a vaccine against the coronavirus, which originated in China late last year before spreading worldwide, infecting millions. More than 140,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.
“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, “John Demers, deputy attorney general for national security, said Tuesday.
In order to hide its theft efforts, the Justice Department alleges that hackers packed the victims’ data into encrypted files from Roshal’s compressed file; changed the names of RAR files, victim documents and system timestamps; and hidden programs and documents. The defendants re-victimized companies, government entities and organizations from which they had previously stolen data.
The defendants are accused of:
- One count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
- One count of conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
- One count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
- A charge of unauthorized access to a computer, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
- seven aggravated identity theft charges, each with a mandatory sentence of two non-consecutive years in prison
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The latest revelation comes immediately after a series of speeches by Trump administration officials criticizing China’s use of espionage and cyber attacks to steal intellectual property from American companies. Earlier this month, FBI Director Chris Wray said that Chinese tactics have created “one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history.”
US officials have long complained that the theft of Chinese intellectual property has cost the economy billions of dollars in revenue, thousands of jobs and threatens national security. Meanwhile, Beijing maintains that it does not engage in intellectual property theft.
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