London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 02, 2025

US charges four members of Chinese military with ‘organised and brazen’ hacking of Equifax credit agency

US Justice Department blames Beijing for one of the largest hacks in history, which affected roughly 145 million people in 2017. ‘We remind the Chinese government that we have the capability to remove the internet’s cloak of anonymity,’ Attorney General William Barr says

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged four members of the Chinese military with hacking into one of America’s largest credit reporting agencies and stealing the personal data of around half of all US citizens.

The alleged hack of Atlanta-headquartered Equifax also allowed the hackers, determined by the DOJ to be members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), to obtain trade secrets related to the company’s database designs.

“This was an organised and remarkably brazen criminal heist of sensitive information of nearly half of all Americans,” US General Attorney William Barr, unveiling the nine-count indictment, said on Monday.

The four individuals alleged to have committed the 2017 cyberintrusion – Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei – were part of the PLA’s 54th Research Institute, the DOJ said. Their names are now listed on the FBI’s “most wanted” online database.

As well as obtaining the names, birth dates and social security numbers of around 145 million American citizens, the hackers also collected the driver license details of at least 10 million individuals and the credit card information of 200,000 people, according to the indictment.

FBI deputy director David Bowdich described the hack as the “largest theft of sensitive PII [personal identifiable information] by state-sponsored hackers ever recorded”.

The indictment, which was handed down by a grand jury in Atlanta, marked the culmination of more than two years of investigation conducted by officials from the FBI and DOJ, and in close coordination with Equifax.

The nine criminal charges brought by the 21-page indictment cover computer fraud, economic espionage and wire fraud, and are related to actions taken between May and July of 2017.

Detailing the methods employed in the breach, the indictment alleged that the hackers exploited vulnerabilities in software used by Equifax through which users could dispute possible inaccuracies in their records.



To mask their identities, the hackers were alleged to have used some 34 IP addresses in 20 counties, employed encrypted communication channels and wiped log files on a daily basis, said DOJ officials.

As one of the US’ top credit reporting agencies, Equifax collates and stores consumer information of tens of millions of Americans, data that it then sells to companies seeking to evaluate an individual’s credit rating or verify their identity.

With the DOJ action, the US was reminding China that it had the capability “to remove the Internet’s cloak of anonymity and find the hackers that [the] nation repeatedly deploys against us”, Barr said.

Though there was not yet any evidence of misuse of the obtained data, the FBI’s Bowdich said it could be readily monetised, adding that the relationship between a healthy economy and national security was something “China recognises very well”.

Personal information could also be used to direct targeted packages to US government officials, he said.

Monday’s announcement marked the latest in a rapidly growing list of criminal cases the DOJ has brought against Chinese entities over economic espionage, which officials say costs the US hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

Currently, the FBI is pursuing around 1,000 investigations related to China’s alleged theft of US trade secrets in all 56 of its field offices, bureau director Christopher Wray said at a conference in Washington last week.

Those actions have dovetailed with the US administration’s efforts to secure commitments from Beijing to alter its trade and economic practices, but have also accompanied a rise in complaints of racial profiling by Chinese-Americans, particularly those working in advanced or sensitive technologies.

As has become something of a scripted asterisk for law enforcement and justice officials speaking out against Beijing’s alleged acts of cyberintrusion and economic espionage, Bowdich emphasised during Monday’s press conference that the DOJ’s action was an indictment of China's government, not its people.

“Confronting this threat effectively does not mean we should not do business with China, host Chinese students, welcome Chinese visitors or coexist with China as a country on the world stage,” he said.

“What it does mean,” Bowdich continued, “is that when China violates our criminal laws and international norms, we will not tolerate it and we will hold them accountable for it.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×