U.S. accuses Chinese military of hacking Equifax to steal more than 100 million personal data.
The U.S. Department of Justice
announced on Monday (10) that four members of the Chinese military have been
sued on suspicion of participating in a massive hacking attack on the database
of the US credit rating agency giant Equifax in 2017.
The
four hackers were accused of stealing the sensitive personal information of
about 145 million Americans, one of the largest data breaches in the world.
Some
of the company's customers in the UK and Canada were also affected.
"This
is the largest data theft ever," said US Attorney General William Barr.
Court
documents stated that the four were allegedly members of the 54th Research
Institute of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
The
Justice Department's indictment alleges that the defendants spent weeks hacking
into Equifax's secure network and stealing customer personal data.
The
indictment also alleged that the defendant had stolen trade secrets, including
data compilation and database design.
What happened in 2017?
Equifax
said these hackers were stealing customer information between mid-May 2017 and
the end of July 2017. The company found the information stolen at the end
of July.
Officials
said it took authorities more than a year to track their 34 servers in 20
countries that were allegedly used to hide the tracks.
The
Ministry of Justice's indictment charges four members of the 54th Institute of
the Chinese Army Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei-suspected of hacking,
computer fraud, and economic spying And wire fraud.
Equifax
holds data on more than 820 million consumers and information on 91 million
businesses.
FBI
Deputy Director David Bowdich said there was no evidence to date that the data
was used to steal personal bank accounts or credit cards.
After
discovering the hack, Equifax paid a $ 700 million settlement to the Federal
Trade Commission. U.S. regulators say the Atlanta-based company failed to
take reasonable steps to protect its network.
"This
is a deliberate and comprehensive violation of the private information of the
American people," Barr said in a statement.
He
pointed out, "Today, we demand that PLA hackers be held responsible for
their crimes. We remind the Chinese government that we have the ability to
uncover the anonymous camouflage of the Internet and find out that this country
has repeatedly deployed hackers to attack us."
China
has not commented on the allegations.
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