The US Justice Department said yesterday that it's charged five Chinese residents and two Malaysian businessmen over a wide-ranging hacking effort.
Federal prosecutors said five Chinese nationals had been charged with hacking more than 100 companies in the United States and abroad, including software development companies, computer manufacturers, telecommunications providers, social media companies, video game companies, non-profit organizations, universities and think-tanks, as well as foreign governments and pro-democracy politicians and activists in Hong Kong.
The attacks "facilitated the theft of source code, software code signing certificates, customer account data and valuable business information", the department said in a statement.
The government also said two Malaysian businessmen, Wong Ong Hua, 46, and Ling Yang Ching, 32, were charged with conspiring with two of the Chinese hackers to profit from computer intrusions targeting video game companies in the US, France, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.
The Justice Department said the pair operated through a Malaysian firm called SEA Gamer Mall.
Department officials credited the Malaysian authorities with arresting both businessmen.
But Deputy Attorney-General Jeffrey Rosen said "the Chinese Communist Party has chosen a different path of making China safe for cyber criminals so long as they attack computers outside China and steal intellectual property helpful to China".
The Justice Department said it's obtained search warrants this month resulting in the seizure of hundreds of accounts, servers, domain names and "dead drop" Web pages used by the hackers to help siphon data from their victims.
Separately, the US has blacklisted a Chinese developer of a port, airport and resort complex in Cambodia, saying it was built on land seized from local people and there were "credible reports" it could be used to host Chinese military assets.
Union Development Group Co is building the Dara Sakor complex in a national park on the Cambodian coast, with a runway capable of taking some of the world's biggest planes.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there were "credible reports" that Dara Sakor "could be used to host (Chinese) military assets".
"If so, (this) would go against Cambodia's Constitution and could threaten Indo-Pacific stability, possibly impacting Cambodia's sovereignty and the security of our allies," he added in a statement on Tuesday.
REUTERS, BLOOMBERG