China syndromeU.S.: Chinese Government Hackers Behind Equifax Breach
Chinse government hackers stole the personal information of nearly 150 million Americans in 2017, when they successfully hacked Equifax. China has been using its vast network of intelligence agencies to conduct a sustained campaign aiming to collect data on the citizens of the United States and other countries, and systematically steal scientific research and innovation, in order to weaken Western economies and accelerate China’s march toward global scientific and economic hegemony.
The U.S. Department f Justice on Monday said that the United States had indicted four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who were involved in the 2017 breach of the Equifax credit reporting agency which affected roughly 145 million people.
“This was one of the largest data breaches in history,” Attorney General William Barr said of the hacking, which came to light in the summer of 2017.
The Justice Department accused Beijing of being behind the theft of citizens’ personal details as well as some of Equifax’s company secrets.
The accused are based in China and none are in custody. News agency AP reported that officials in Washington hoped to deter other would-be hackers by demonstrating their ability to track individuals in such cases.
“Today, we hold PLA hackers accountable for their criminal actions, and we remind the Chinese government that we have the capability to remove the internet’s cloak of anonymity and find the hackers that [China] repeatedly deploys against us,” Barr added.
“This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,” Barr said in a statement.
Business Insider reports that the case comes amid White House warnings on the political and economic influence of China. The U.S. intelligence community, as well as security experts and business analysts, have long accused China of using its vast network of intelligence agencies of conducting a sustained campaign aiming to collect data on the citizens of the United States and other countries, and systematically steal scientific research and innovation, in order to weaken Western economies and accelerate China’s march toward global scientific and economic hegemony.
The Justice Department said on its website: “The nine-count indictment alleges that Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei were members of the PLA’s 54th Research Institute, a component of the Chinese military. They allegedly conspired with each other to hack into Equifax’s computer networks, maintain unauthorized access to those computers, and steal sensitive, personally identifiable information.”
In 2015 Experian, which along with Equifax and TransUnion are the three major consumer credit reporting agencies in the United States, experienced a similar attack in which roughly 15 million new customers of T-Mobile were affected.
Equifax last year agreed to a $700 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission to compensate victims of the breach.
