Security News > 2020 > February > US govt accuses four Chinese Army soldiers of hacking Equifax and stealing 145 million Americans' data

The United States today announced criminal charges against four Chinese Army soldiers who, it is claimed, are the hackers who stole 145 million Americans' personal data from credit scorer Equifax.

Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke, and Liu Lei, are all said to have been members of the People's Liberation Army's 54th Research Institute hacking team, and are accused of illegally accessed Equifax's customer databases.

"The PLA hackers obtained names, birth dates, and social security numbers for the 145 million American victims, in addition to driver's license numbers for at least 10 million Americans stored on Equifax's databases," said the indictment, adding that another 200,000 credit card numbers were also stolen.

Barr said in a statement: "Today, we hold PLA hackers accountable for their criminal actions, and we remind the Chinese government that we have the capability to remove the Internet's cloak of anonymity and find the hackers that nation repeatedly deploys against us."

Prosecutors allege the four used "Two China-based IP addresses that connected directly to Equifax's network" to access the servers at first, before downloading their illicitly-obtained data by using around 34 servers in "Nearly twenty countries" connected over a variety of secure shell software and even old-fashioned remote desktop connections.

News URL

https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/10/chinese_hacked_equivax/