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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 22 2020, @08:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the NOW-they-tell-us? dept.

DOJ: Chinese hackers stole "hundreds of millions of dollars" of secrets

Two state-sponsored hackers in China targeted US businesses in a "sophisticated and prolific threat" for more than 10 years, both for financial gain and to steal trade secrets, the Department of Justice said today.

The 11-count indictment (PDF), which was made public today, alleges Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi worked with China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) and other agencies to hack into "hundreds of victim companies, governments, non-governmental organizations, and individual dissidents, clergy, and democratic and human rights activists in the United States and abroad."

Li and Dong were allegedly infiltrating networks of businesses in a wide array of sectors, including "high tech manufacturing; civil, industrial, and medical device engineering; business, educational, and gaming software development; solar energy; and pharmaceuticals," as well as defense contractors, since at least September 2009. In recent months, prosecutors allege, the two were seeking ways in to "the networks of biotech and other firms publicly known for work on COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and testing technology" in at least 11 countries, including the US.

The indictment does not name the firms in question, only saying that "on or about January 25 and 27," Li was trying to break into networks at a Maryland biotech firm and a Massachusetts biotech firm, both of which were publicly known by that point to be working on COVID-19 vaccines. Matching up the timelines, the targets seem to have been Novavax, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


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  • (Score: 2) by DeVilla on Thursday July 23 2020, @08:42PM

    by DeVilla (5354) on Thursday July 23 2020, @08:42PM (#1025530)

    I'm not sure what you mean. I haven't been watching these kind of articles lately myself. It's because I remember for years all the articles claiming Chinese hackers were doing things and people saying you can't know who they really are because they could route connections through anything. I agreed with that. Then the vault 7 leaks showed that theoretical tools for making such a false flag attack were in fact not theoretical.

    Then the Russian hacking story broke and we were suddenly able to know, with certainty, that it was Russian hackers, under Putin's direct orders, at the personal request of Trump, due to the "methods & motives" of the hackers. I've never heard what methods are known to be exclusively Russian. I've never heard how all potential motives (at the time I was capable listing dozens of groups with motives to steal and publish that information) were ruled out.

    But still, if people are asserting this could only be Chinese hackers, baring an actual trail of the stolen goods, it's questionable. I thought that was a given.

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