Equifax Hack Update: Justice Department Indicts Members Of Chinese Military Indicted In 2017 Attack

Four members of the Chinese military were indicted Monday on charges of stealing the personal information of more than 145 million Americans in a hack of the the credit company Equifax in 2017, U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced.

“This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,” Barr said in his announcement. “Today, we hold PLA [People's Liberation Army] hackers accountable for their criminal actions, and we remind the Chinese government that we have the capability to remove the Internet’s cloak of anonymity and find the hackers that nation repeatedly deploys against us.”

The individuals indicted by the Justice Departmentn were identified as Liu Le, Wang Qian, Wu Zhiyong and Xu Ke. In addition to personal and financial information, they are accused of stealing company secrets and database designs. They are currently still in China and not in the custody of U.S. law enforcement.

The Justice Department’s indictment is the latest move in a growing campaign against Chinese espionage. In 2014, the Obama administration charged five hackers affiliated with the Chinese military of attempting to steal trade secrets from several American corporations. More recently, a Harvard professor was arrested for concealing his ties to China’s Thousand Talents Plan, a program that aims to recruit individuals with knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property.

“This kind of attack on American industry is of a piece with other Chinese illegal acquisitions of sensitive personal data,” Barr said. “For years, we have witnessed China’s voracious appetite for the personal data of Americans, including the theft of personnel records from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the intrusion into Marriott hotels, and Anthem health insurance company, and now the wholesale theft of credit and other information from Equifax. This data has economic value, and these thefts can feed China’s development of artificial intelligence tools as well as the creation of intelligence targeting packages.”