U.S. Indicts Four Chinese Military Officers Over Massive 2017 Equifax Breach
The Justice Department charges four members of China's People's Liberation Army with stealing the personal data of 145 million Americans in the largest known state-sponsored hack of consumer information.
The U.S. Justice Department unseals a nine-count indictment against four Chinese military officers accused of executing the devastating 2017 Equifax hack. The accused men, identified as Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke, and Liu Lei, belong to the People's Liberation Army's 54th Research Institute and face charges of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, economic espionage, and wire fraud.
Officials state that the hackers steal sensitive personal information from nearly 150 million Americans, marking the largest theft of sensitive data by state-sponsored hackers ever recorded. To evade detection, the defendants route their attack traffic through 34 servers in approximately 20 countries, encrypt their communications to blend in with normal network activity, and delete log files daily to erase their tracks.
Attorney General Bill Barr emphasizes that this rare move to indict foreign military personnel stems from the indiscriminate targeting of ordinary American civilians. FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich acknowledges the difficulty of apprehending hackers who are seemingly out of reach, but defends the indictments as a necessary response to the massive scale of the privacy violation.