The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced that eight leaders or members of a Chinese hacking company as well as two Chinese officials have been charged in connection with the global cyber espionage campaign targeting news organizations and American agencies.
According to US officials, some new criminal cases revealed new information about the ecosystem for recruitment/service for hacking in China. In this system, the Chinese government pays private companies and contractors to target those bodies in which it (China) has special interest.
In an exclusion, officials of a private hacking company called ‘I-Sun’ have been charged. US officials say that the officials of this company carried out a widespread cyber violations worldwide which was a campaign to gather a comprehensive intelligence.
Two law enforcement officers of China have also been charged. It was said in the departure that in other cases, hackers themselves hacked and then tried to sell the information stolen to the government.
Officials claimed that this hacking company successfully recovered equal amounts from the government for each ’email inbox’ hacked by about 10,000 to 75,000 US dollars. The bodies that were targeted during hacking included the US Finance Department.
The US Finance Department had revealed in the last year’s last year that Chinese hackers targeted him. The Finance Department described it as a ‘large cyber security incident’.
In the Chinese Corporate Registry, the phone numbers listed for I-Sun were contacted but no reply was found. Representatives of ‘I-Sun’ did not immediately respond to the email sent by AP for comment.
