US indicts 5 China PLA military unit members on cyber spying charges

Five members of China’s PLA indicted; charges come after years of probe

Washington, May 19: The US on Monday indicted five members of the Chinese military on charges they stole US secrets through hacking to help state- run companies, the justice department said.

A grand jury filed charges against five people in the People’s Liberation Army's shadowy Unit 61398 for allegedly stealing steel industry secrets to benefit Chinese stateowned companies.

The criminal charges said that the hackers broke into US computers to gain a competitive advantage, hurting companies such as Westinghouse and the US Steel Corp as well as workers.

Attorney General Eric Holder said the charges were the first of their kind against state actors and should serve as “a wake- up call”. “This administration will not tolerate actions by any nation that seeks to illegally sabotage American companies and undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market,” Mr Holder told reporters.

“The indictment makes clear that state actors who engage in economic espionage, even over the Internet from faraway offices in Shanghai, will be exposed for their criminal conduct and sought for apprehension and prosecution in an American court of law,” he said.

The charges, which US officials said came after several years of investigation, were filed against Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu and Gu Chunhui.

The move marks an escalation in an intense dispute between the world’s two largest economies over hacking, with the United States moving beyond rhetoric in pressuring China.

Hacking has emerged as a major irritant in the already complicated relationship between China and the US, with President Barack Obama raising

The move marks an escalation in a dispute between the world’s two largest economies over hacking, with the US moving beyond rhetoric in pressuring China

concerns directly with his counterpart Xi Jinping.

In a report in February last year, the security firm Mandiant said that China has made a major investment in cyber- espionage and set up a militarylinked unit with thousands of workers who pilfer intellectual property and government secrets overseas.

The workers operate from a non- descript, 12story building on the outskirts of Shanghai and had stolen data from at least 141 organisations spanning 20 industries, the 2013 study said.

The report said that the hacking group known as APT1 — which stands for “Advanced Persistent Threat” — was believed to be a branch of what is known as Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army.

A separate report led by former US officials estimated last year that hacking was costing the US economy more than $ 300 billion each year — equivalent to what the United States sells each year to Asia. China was by far the biggest culprit, although other countries including Russia also have hacked United States’ intellectual property, it said.

Beijing has hit back that Washington is hypocritical as it conducts widespread surveillance around the world, as revealed by former government contractor Edward Snowden.

Snowden’s leaks have indicated that the US has hacked into Chinese telecom giant Huawei — whose own attempts to penetrate the US market have been blocked by legislators’ concerns on national security. — AFP