United States Department of Justice charges Chinese nationals with stealing information data from American companies

Cybercrime is no doubt a clear and present danger, capable of dealing more damage than a thousand soldiers and tanks. After the attacks in the city of Atlanta and coordinated attacks on banks, the United States government just identified two Chinese nationals to have conducted a long-running, well planned and co-ordinated hacking operation that targeted several major American corporations as well as government agencies. The United States Department of Justice charged Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong with cybercrimes involving theft of proprietary and sensitive information. The two hackers went by numerous aliases and were majorly involved with a hacking group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 10.

What’s shocking is the scale and duration of the ongoing cyber operation, beginning from 2006 and having targeted over 40 organizations with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and IBM among the big names. The group infected their victim’s computers with malicious software which gave them remote monitoring capabilities and enabled them to log keystrokes. Over the course of the cyber-attacks, the hackers managed to steal hundreds of Gigabytes of sensitive information from companies that belonged to the energy, aviation, and space technology sectors.

China has been suspected of espionage for a long time, stealing technological and military secrets from western countries for the better part of 25 years. It is also alleged by many that China has stolen automotive, aviation and high-technology secrets to bolster its own capabilities.

This development comes in the wake the trade war between the US and China and could increase tensions between the two nations, especially after American authorities coordinated with their Canadian counterparts to arrest the CFO of Huawei, one of the biggest companies in China.