A federal grand jury in Spokane, Wash. has indicted two Chinese nationals on charges that they hacked into pharma companies and hundreds of other businesses, governments and organizations — in some cases on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
The 11-count indictment, which the U.S. Department of Justice announced today, alleges that Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi for the past 10 years targeted companies in countries with high technology industries, including the United States. They stole terabytes of data.
“China has now taken its place, alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea, in that shameful club of nations that provide a safe haven for cybercriminals in exchange for those criminals being ‘on-call’ to work for the benefit of the state, here to feed the Chinese Communist party’s insatiable hunger for American and other non-Chinese companies’ hard-earned intellectual property, including COVID-19 research,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in a news release.