indictment alleges<\/a>\u00a0that Chinese nationals Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi stole terabytes of data over\u00a010 years from companies in nations including the U.S., Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and Australia.<\/p>\nThe defendants, who currently work for the Guangdong Province International Affairs Research Center in China, targeted companies in the fields of high-tech manufacturing, medical device and industrial engineering, education, gaming software, solar energy, defense and pharmaceuticals, the DOJ said.<\/p>\n
Most recently, the defendants are alleged to have targeted the networks of U.S. companies involved in coronavirus research, including those developing vaccines and treatments.<\/p>\n
The indictment noted that while the defendants often targeted the companies for their own gain, they also worked at the behest of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) or other Chinese government agencies. The defendants are alleged to have given the MSS email passwords belonging to Chinese dissidents, allowing the targeting of a Hong Kong community organizer, a Christian church in China and a former Tiananmen Square protester, among others.<\/p>\n
Assistant Attorney General\u00a0John Demers\u00a0said during a press conference Tuesday that the actions of the defendants and of the Chinese government in protecting them ran \u201cafoul of norms of acceptable state behavior in cyberspace, which the international community must address.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChina 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 \u2018on call\u2019 to work for the benefit of the state, here to feed the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s insatiable hunger for American and other non-Chinese companies\u2019 hard-earned intellectual property, including COVID-19 research,\u201d Demers said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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