Security News > 2020 > July > US Charges 2 Chinese Hackers for Targeting COVID-19 Research and Trade Secrets

The U.S. Department of Justice yesterday revealed charges against two Chinese nationals for their alleged involvement in a decade-long hacking spree targeting dissidents, government agencies, and hundreds of organizations in as many as 11 countries.

"China has now taken its place, alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea, in that shameful club of nations that provide a safe haven for cyber criminals in exchange for those criminals being 'on call' to work for the benefit of the state, [and] to feed the Chinese Communist party's insatiable hunger for American and other non-Chinese companies' hard-earned intellectual property, including COVID-19 research," said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers, who leads the DoJ's National Security Division.

It's Not Just China The development is all the more significant since it comes just months after both the FBI and Homeland Security warned that China was actively trying to steal data from organizations working on COVID-19 research and amid mounting tensions between the U.S. and China over national security concerns.

In May, Iran-backed hackers purportedly targeted U.S. drugmaker Gilead, whose antiviral drug remdesivir has been proven to trigger an immune response in patients infected with COVID-19.

The U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre alleged that hackers linked to Russian intelligence services had targeted companies researching a coronavirus vaccine in the U.S., U.K., and Canada without specifying which organizations had been targeted, or whether any information had been stolen.

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