The Justice Department on Monday accused three Chinese state security officials of coordinating a vast hacking campaign to steal sensitive and secret information from government entities, universities and corporations around the world, including research related to autonomous vehicles, genetic-sequencing technology and infectious diseases like the Ebola virus. The announcement came as the White House formally accused the Chinese government of breaching Microsoft email systems and paying criminal groups to extort companies for millions of dollars in ransomware attacks, showing that the Biden administration was determined to aggressively confront Beijing. In an indictment that had been sealed since May, the Justice Department accused officers in a provincial foreign intelligence bureau, the Hainan Province Ministry of State Security, of creating a sham information security company that they used as a front for a sprawling hacking operation. The officers, Ding Xiaoyang, Cheng Qingmin and Zhu Yunmin, used the front company to manage a group of computer hackers and linguists who hacked into computer systems around the world to benefit China and hide Beijing’s role in the thefts, according to the indictment. One of the hackers, Wu Shurong, was accused of creating malware that was used to break into foreign computer systems.

Source: New York Times July 19, 2021 14:03 UTC