Holder: Chinese officers hacked U.S. firms
Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday that members of the Chinese military have engaged in the hacking of American businesses and entities, including U.S. Steel Corp., Westinghouse, Alcoa, Allegheny Technologies, the United Steel Workers Union and SolarWorld.
The victims operate in Pennsylvania, and a grand jury there returned a 31-count indictment against members of the Chinese military, accusing them of violating federal law by hacking to spy and steal secrets, Holder said.
The indictment alleges that five People's Liberation Army officers "maintained unauthorized access to victim computers to steal information from these entities that would be useful" to the victims' competitors in China, the attorney general said.
Their names are Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu and Gu Chunhui, according to the indictment.
The Chinese government did not immediately confirm or deny the veracity of the names.
In some instances, the hackers stole trade secrets that would have been "particularly beneficial to Chinese companies at the time that they were stolen," Holder said.
In other cases, they are accused of swiping sensitive internal communications that could provide a competitor or a litigation adversary with insight into the strategy and the vulnerabilities of the victimized companies and entities, he said.
The attorney general said that he hopes the Chinese government will work with American officials to bring the offenders to justice and that the United States intends to prosecute.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington referred questions to a statement on China's Foreign Ministry site in which spokesman Qin Gang called the charges "extremely absurd."
He said that the United States "has fabricated facts" and that China is a "staunch defender of cyber security."
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Holder: Chinese officers hacked U.S. firms