The US Department of Justice on Monday accused four Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) members of stealing the sensitive personal information of about 145 million Americans, in one of the world’s largest-ever data breaches.
The four members of the PLA’s 54th Research Institute were charged with multiple counts of hacking, computer fraud, economic espionage and wire fraud for their alleged involvement in the massive 2017 hacking of credit rating agency Equifax.
US officials said that it took more than a year to track them through the 34 servers in 20 countries they allegedly used to hide their tracks.
The US believes that the suspects — Wu Zhiyong (吳志勇), Wang Qian (王乾), Xu Ke (許可) and Liu Lei (劉磊) — are in China.
“This was an organized and remarkably brazen criminal heist of sensitive information of nearly half of all Americans, as well as the hard work and intellectual property of an American company, by a unit of the Chinese military,” US Attorney General Bill Barr said.
Beijing yesterday firmly rejected the claims, saying that it is a “staunch defender of cybersecurity.”
“The Chinese government and army ... never engage in or participate in activities of trade theft through the Internet,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) told a regular news briefing.
The hack stunned US intelligence officials, following a similar intrusion on the civil service database of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), also blamed on the Chinese.
Since then, hotel giant Marriott lost data on about 500 million global customers to hackers believed to be Chinese.
US officials believe the Chinese military and security service are collecting personal data on Americans for strictly intelligence purposes.
After the OPM hack there were worries that Beijing could use the information to identify US spies working under the cover of non-intelligence jobs.
FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said that there was no evidence yet of the Equifax data having been used, for example to hijack a person’s bank account or credit card.
However, he added: “If you get the personal identifying information of people, you can do a lot with that.”
Atlanta, Georgia-based Equifax is one of three giant, little-regulated credit raters that sweep up financial data on all Americans — their credit cards and banking activity especially — that necessarily comes with identifying data such as their addresses and social security numbers.
The hackers allegedly took advantage of a vulnerability in the Apache Struts software that Equifax had on its systems.
While Apache notified clients of the problem in March 2017, Equifax did not fix it for months, which allowed the hackers to enter its systems with relative ease.
FIVE-YEAR WINDOW? A defense institute CEO said a timeline for a potential Chinese invasion was based on expected ‘tough measures’ when Xi Jinping seeks a new term Most Taiwanese are willing to defend the nation against a Chinese attack, but the majority believe Beijing is unlikely to invade within the next five years, a poll showed yesterday. The poll carried out last month was commissioned by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taipei-based think tank, and released ahead of Double Ten National Day today, when President William Lai (賴清德) is to deliver a speech. China maintains a near-daily military presence around Taiwan and has held three rounds of war games in the past two years. CIA Director William Burns last year said that Chinese President Xi Jinping
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that China has “no right to represent Taiwan,” but stressed that the nation was willing to work with Beijing on issues of mutual interest. “The Republic of China has already put down roots in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu,” Lai said in his first Double Ten National Day address outside the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. “And the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China [PRC] are not subordinate to each other.” “The People’s Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan,” he said at the event marking the 113th National Day of
SPEECH IMPEDIMENT? The state department said that using routine celebrations or public remarks as a pretext for provocation would undermine peace and stability Beijing’s expected use of President William Lai’s (賴清德) Double Ten National Day speech today as a pretext for provocative measures would undermine peace and stability, the US Department of State said on Tuesday. Taiwanese officials have said that China is likely to launch military drills near Taiwan in response to Lai’s speech as a pretext to pressure the nation to accept its sovereignty claims. A state department spokesperson said it could not speculate on what China would or would not do. “However, it is worth emphasizing that using routine annual celebrations or public remarks as a pretext or excuse for provocative or coercive
CONCERNS: Allowing the government, political parties or the military to own up to 10 percent of a large media firm is a risk Taiwan cannot afford to take, a lawyer said A Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator has proposed amendments to allow the government, political parties and the military to indirectly invest in broadcast media, prompting concerns of potential political interference. Under Article 1 of the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法), the government and political parties — as well as foundations established with their endowments, and those commissioned by them — cannot directly or indirectly invest in satellite broadcasting businesses. A similar regulation is in the Cable Radio and Television Act (有線廣播電視法). “The purpose of banning the government, political parties and the military from investing in the media is to prevent them from interfering
RSS