During the day yesterday the US Department of Justice formalized the accusations against four members of the Chinese military forces in connection with the security breach that occurred in 2017 against Equifax, a company specialized in the elaboration of credit reports and rankings, which has exposed the information of 143 million American citizens. We had told the story in this news: Equifax violated, information stolen from 143 million people.
All four men – Wang Qian, Xu Ke, Liu Lei, and Wu Zhiyong – are members of the 54th Research Institute of the Chinese Army and all with nine indictments against him, including association for computer fraud, association for economic espionage and association for telematic fraud.
"The scale of the crime has been shocking. The deliberate and indiscriminate theft of a large amount of sensitive personal data of civilians, as happened in this case, cannot be tolerated. […] It is a deliberate intrusion into the private information of the American people, "said the Attorney General William Barr.
According to the facts established by the Department, the group has compromised the Equifax systems, located in the city of Alpharetta in Georgia, starting from the month of May 2017 by exploiting a Known vulnerability of the Apache Struts framwork used by Equifax. The consequent theft of information, due to the scale and depth of the type of data stolen, put 143 million people at risk of identity theft episodes.
Regarding the matter, the Deputy Director of the FBI, David Bowdich, stated that there is currently no evidence that Equifax data has been used. Bowdich has expressed some frustration at the general approach the public is having towards violations of this type: "We have almost become immune to these episodes. We cannot think this way. The American economy cannot be lazy in protecting information and intellectual property from our adversaries. American citizens cannot be lazy in protecting their sensitive data, "he said, referring to the fact that the public has become accustomed to such incidents without implementing preventive procedures and practices. adequate.
These are not the first allegations that the Justice Department has made on the Equifax case. In July, the company's ex-CIO, Jun Ying, was sentenced to 4 months in prison for insider trading: had sold his stock options after learning of the accident.
And not even the first time that the Justice Department has thrown itself at members of the Chinese military in an industrial espionage case. During 2014, 31 indictments were raised under the Obama administration for theft of industrial secrets, identity theft, cyber fraud association and other crimes against five officers of the Chinese army, and for which China has denied any involvement. It was an episode that was seen as an unprecedented expansion of internal powers, but since then this type of accusation has become increasingly frequent in the wake of that case.