US charges 2 Chinese citizens with broad hacking
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday accused two Chinese nationals with ties to China’s security apparatus of infiltrating commercial and government computer systems, including a Department of Energy lab, in an ongoing effort to advance Beijing’s economic and geopolitical interests.
The indictment comes as the United States is preparing to join with several allies and trading partners in a collective rebuke of China’s attempts to obtain trade secrets and intellectual property through a state-coordinated cyber-espionage campaign, according to people with knowledge of the plan.
The allegations highlight the tension between the United States and China over what the White House says is a brazen effort by the Chinese to gather technology and other proprietary information using cyberattacks and espionage. The Trump administration is pushing on several fronts to stop Beijing’s practice of pressuring, coercing or stealing intellectual property, including pursuing criminal charges and restricting Chinese students and investment in the United States.
It is also trying to get Beijing to agree to change its practices through trade talks, an effort that is expected to get even more complicated as the administration continues leveling charges against Chinese nationals and as it engages in tough rhetoric toward Beijing.
In a wide-ranging indictment unsealed Thursday, the Justice Department describes the broad outlines of what it calls a years-long campaign by China to steal U.S. technological secrets in a range of industries to allow Beijing’s companies to undercut international competitors and help its military erode the United States’ defensive edge.
Hackers working for the Chinese government were revealed to be behind the cyberattack on the Marriott Hotel chain that collected personal details of about 500 million guests. And a Chinese intelligence official who groomed the employees of U.S. companies to steal trade secrets was arrested in Belgium and extradited to the United States in October to face espionage charges.
The government said it had charged two Chinese nationals, Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, with conspiracy to hack into computer systems and commit wire fraud and identity theft. It accused them of targeting unnamed aviation, telecommunications, pharmaceutical and satellite companies in addition to government agencies, including NASA’S Goddard Space Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The indictment does not describe any specific technology stolen by the group but said they “successfully obtained unauthorized access” to a range of entities, including the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a government lab in California.
The Justice Department said the hackers acted on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security’s Tianjin State Security Bureau — the same arm of the security ministry that has been responsible for several cyberhacking and espionage cases this year.
The hackers were part of a group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 10, or APT10, a well-known hacking group that is adept at overcoming network defenses and has been repeatedly singled out by U.S. cyberprotection companies for sending phishing emails aimed at installing malicious software on the computers of its victims.