Justice Department Charges Chinese Military Members With Equifax Hack

The Department of Justice has charged four members of the Chinese Military with the hack into Equifax that exposed millions of Americans’ private records.

According to The Hill:

Attorney General William Barr on Monday announced indictments against four members of the Chinese military for hacking into the systems of credit agency Equifax in 2017, stealing the personal information of more than 145 million Americans in one of the biggest data breaches in history.

Advertisement

The nine-count indictment alleges that four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)— Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Le — worked to steal personal information including Social Security numbers and drivers license numbers.

“This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,” Barr said on Monday. “Today, we hold PLA hackers accountable for their criminal actions, and we remind the Chinese government that we have the capability to remove the Internet’s cloak of anonymity and find the hackers that nation repeatedly deploys against us.”

The indictment, which was passed down by a federal grand jury in Atlanta, also charged the four Chinese nationals with stealing trade secrets, such as Equifax’s database designs, and noted that the defendants took steps to evade detection, such as routing online traffic through servers in 20 different countries to mask their location.

Charges are usually not brought against foreign intelligence officials but Barr said that the act was so deliberate that it begged for charges to be brought.

SHARE THIS WITH YOUR FRIENDS:
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Stephane
Stephane
4 years ago

Huawei is the biggest thief of data. All their equipments transfer all the data of everyday in BURST of less than a thousand’s of a second.
Anyone with chinese equipment should give it back and get more protected equipment.
Funny what the military teaches.

John
John
4 years ago

So what happens now ? Nothing, as usual.

2
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x