US Charges 3 Chinese Nationals Over Hacking

Three Chinese nationals were charged with cybercrime offences today, accused of hacking three companies - Moody’s Analytics, Trimble and Siemens - to steal gigabytes of sensitive data and trade secrets.

The US Department of Justice said the men were part of an organization, Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Company Limited (Boyusec), which has been linked by cybersecurity researchers to one of the more advanced and active Chinese government-sponsored espionage groups, Forbes reported.

The defendants were named by the DoJ Monday as Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao and Xia Lei. IT giant Siemens appeared to have been hit the hardest, as the hackers stole 407 gigabytes of data from its energy, technology and transportation businesses, according to the indictment.

The men were charged with hacking into Trimble in 2016 when it was in the process of designing more accurate satellite navigation tech. They were accused of pilfering at least 275 megabytes of data, including trade secrets related to that technology.

As for Moody’s, the DoJ said the financial analytics firm was hacked in 2011, when the accused were said to have compromised company email to forward on a prominent employee’s mail to their own accounts.

Both Wu and Dong were co-founders and shareholders of Boyusec, according to the DoJ, which noted Lei was an employee. All were residents of Guangzhou, the US said, and were accused of using spear phishing emails to get access to a variety of networks.

Boyusec has previously been linked to a hacker group known by various names, including APT3 and Gothic Panda, which in turn has been connected with the Chinese Ministry of State Security.