Justice Department charges Chinese hackers-for-hire linked to Treasury breach

The Department of Justice has announced criminal charges against 12 Chinese government-linked hackers who are accused of hacking over 100 American organizations, including the U.S. Treasury, over the course of a decade. The charged individuals all played a “key role” in China’s hacker-for-hire ecosystem, a senior DOJ official said on a background call with reporters, including TechCrunch, on Wednesday. The official added that those charged, which includes contract hackers and Chinese law enforcement officials, targeted organizations in the U.S. and worldwide for the purposes of “suppressing free speech and religious freedoms.” The DOJ also confirmed that two of the indicted individuals are linked to the China government-backed hacking group APT27, or Silk Typhoon. The two individuals, named as Yin Kecheng and Zhou Shuai, are accused of carrying out “multi-year, for-profit computer intrusion campaigns” dating back to 2013. Prosecutors say these campaigns allowed the two individuals t ... Read full article.