Stay connected
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice on Tuesday accused two Chinese nationals, who it said were working on behalf of the Chinese government, of stealing trade secrets and hacking into computer systems of firms working on the Covid-19 vaccine.
According to 11-time indictments, Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 33, have embarked on a global hacking crusade for more than a decade. The formal indictment alleges that the accused should borrow terabytes of knowledge in the United States, as well as in Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The Justice Department said in a process of high-tech production, gaming software, solar engineering, pharmaceutical industry and defense, among the goals of piracy.
A California-based generation and defense company, a Maryland generation and production company, the Hanford Department of Energy in Washington, a Texas engineering company, a Virginia defense contractor, a Massachusetts software company, a gaming software company in California, and several U.S. drug brands. were among thirteen U.S. corporations under attack. Justice Department said.
“In at least one case, the hackers sought to extort the cryptocurrency from a victim entity, threatening to reveal the victim’s stolen source code on the Internet. More recently, defendants have sought vulnerabilities in the PC networks of corporations that are preparing Covid-19 vaccines, generation tests and treatments,” the Justice Department said.
The news comes amid a global race to create a coronavirus vaccine, which originated in China because of last year before spreading around the world, infecting millions of others. According to a Johns Hopkins University account, more than 140,000 people died from the virus in the United States.
“China has now taken its place, along with Russia, Iran, and North Korea, in this shameful club of nations that will offer a haven to cybercriminals in exchange for those criminals” on guard “to the paintings to gain the advantages of the state, here to feed the insatiable thirst of the Chinese Communist Party for the high-value assets acquired by American and non-Chinese corporations.
To conceal their efforts, the Justice Department alleges that the hackers packaged the victims’ knowledge into encrypted compressed files of the Roshal File; replaced file names, victim documents, and formula time stamps; hidden formulas and documents. The defendants re-victimized the companies, government entities and organizations they had stolen knowledge from in the past.
The defendants are each charged with:
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The most recent revelation follows a series of speeches through Trump management officials denouncing China’s use of espionage and cyberattacks to borrow the high-value assets of U.S. companies. In an overwhelming speech earlier this month, FBI Director Chris Wray said Chinese tactics had created “one of the biggest wealth transfers in human history.”
U.S. officials have long complained that the theft of high-value Chinese assets has charged the economy with billions of dollars in profits and thousands of jobs and threatens national security. Beijing argues that it does have interaction in the theft of high-value assets.
Do you have any confidential information? We have to hear from you.
Sign up for loose newsletters and get more CNBC in your inbox
Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services.
© 2020 CNBC LLC. All rights are reserved. An NBCUniversal department
Knowledge is a real-time snapshot: the data is delayed by at least 15 minutes. Global industry and monetary news, inventory quotes and market knowledge and analysis.
Data also by