While the prosecution only named two suspects, unlike the largest group of Russian hackers accused of searching for vaccine data, the Justice Department described their work as long-range and long-range, dating back at least to 2009. US authorities first detected the suspects five years ago, when they stole a gigabyte of information, including the personal and manager accounts of a Department of Energy facility in Hanford, Washington, according to the indictment, which was filed. in the Eastern District of Washington.
In some cases, the suspects attempted to extort money from the companies, according to the indictment. In 2017, Mr. Li threatened to release the source code of a Massachusetts software company if he didn’t give him $ 15,000 in cryptocurrency.
Like the Russian group, Chinese hackers operated with the help of their country’s intelligence agencies. Its interests were broad, spanning manufacturing companies, defense contractors, government agencies, game developers, and medical device manufacturers, and recently grew to include information on the development of the coronavirus vaccine and other data related to the virus.
The suspects also tried to steal other information about Chinese activists for the Ministry of State Security, Beijing’s civilian espionage agency, said John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security. The suspects released account information and passwords belonging to a Hong Kong community organizer, a former Tiananmen Square protester and a pastor of a Christian church in China.
“You can see it by the variety of hacks that made how they were run by the government,” Demers said at a press conference in Washington. “Extorting someone for cryptocurrencies is not something the government is generally interested in, nor are criminal hackers generally not interested in clergy and human rights activists.”
In at least some cases, the Chinese intelligence service provided hackers with software tools to access some accounts. For example, according to the indictment, after Mr. Li initially did not log into the email service of a Burmese human rights group, according to the indictment. Pointing to vulnerabilities in software unknown to the companies that made it or to security researchers, the malware was the type that governments consider among its most valuable hacking tools.
Trump administration officials, in both public speeches and classified briefings for Congress, have stepped up warnings about Chinese intelligence services and their campaign to steal information and influence American politics.
