Beijing
Beijing said on Tuesday it “never engages” in cybertheft, following US indictments of four Chinese army members for alleged involvement in the massive 2017 hacking of credit rating agency Equifax.
The US Justice Department on Monday accused the hackers of stealing the sensitive personal information of some 145 million Americans, in one of the world’s largest-ever data breaches.
Four members of the Chinese army’s 54th Research Institute were charged with multiple counts of hacking, computer fraud, economic espionage and wire fraud.
US officials said it took well over a year to track them through the 34 servers in 20 countries they allegedly used to hide their tracks.
“This was an organised and remarkably brazen criminal heist of sensitive information of nearly half of all Americans, as well as the hard work and intellectual property of an American company, by a unit of the Chinese military,” Attorney General Bill Barr said.
Beijing firmly rejected the claims on Tuesday, saying it is a “staunch defender of cybersecurity”. “The Chinese government and army… never engage in or participate in activities of trade theft through the internet,” said foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang at a regular press briefing.
The hack stunned US intelligence officials, following a similar intrusion on the civil service database of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), also blamed on the Chinese.
Since then, as well, hotels giant Marriott lost data on some 500 million global customers to hackers believed to be Chinese.
US officials believe the Chinese military and security service are collecting personal data on Americans for strictly intelligence purposes.
After the OPM hack there were worries that Beijing could use the information to identify US spies working under the cover of non-intelligence jobs.
FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said there was no evidence yet of the Equifax data having been used, for example to hijack a person´s bank account or credit card.—AFP
