UPDATED 20:57 EDT / NOVEMBER 27 2017

INFRA

Three Chinese nationals indicted over alleged state-sponsored hacking

Three Chinese nationals have been indited by the U.S. Department of Justice on allegations that they were behind the hacking of Moody’s Corp., Siemens AG and Trimble Inc. between 2011 and the middle of this year.

The indictment names Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao and Xia Lei, employees and owners of cybersecurity firm Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Company Ltd., located in Guangzhou, a city 90 minutes north of Hong Kong. According to Reuters, the company, also known as Boyusec, is affiliated with China’s People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398. Most if not all of its hacking operations are state-sponsored and -directed.

The three accused are alleged to have started their hacking spree in 2011, when they hacked into the email account of an influential economist at Moody’s and caused copies of all messages he sent to be forwarded to a dummy account created by the hackers to obtain inside information. In 2014, they are alleged to have gained access to Siemens where they stole 407 gigabytes of data relating to the company’s technology along with employee usernames and passwords. Between 2015 and 2016, the trio is accused of hacking into Trimble and stealing commercial in confidence business documents and data related to Trimble’s global navigation systems.

Although not listed in the indictment, IT News reports that Boyusec is linked to the APT3 hacking group, which is alleged to be behind the 2013 hack of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the Australian equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Defendants Wu, Dong and Xia launched coordinated and targeted cyber intrusions against businesses operating in the United States, including here in the Western District of Pennsylvania, in order to steal confidential business information,” Acting U.S. Attorney Soo C. Song said in a statement. “These conspirators masked their criminal conspiracy by exploiting unwitting computers, called ‘hop points,’ conducting ‘spearphish’ email campaigns to gain unauthorized access to corporate computers, and deploying malicious code to infiltrate the victim computer networks.”

Recognizing that the three accused live in China and there is virtually no chance they will be arrested, Acting Assistant Attorney General Boente implied that the three would be targeted if they ever left China, saying that “the Justice Department is committed to pursuing the arrest and prosecution of these hackers, no matter how long it takes, and we have a long memory.”

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