Category Archives: Department of Justice

DOJ unseals charges against 10 Chinese nationals for hacking aerospace companies

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The Department of Justice on Tuesday unsealed charges against 10 Chinese nationals, including intelligence officers and hackers, for a multi-year campaign to steal aerospace technology and other proprietary information from U.S. companies. Partly relying on a “team of hackers,” intelligence officers at a provincial arm of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) focused on stealing turbofan-engine technology used in European and U.S. commercial airliners, DOJ said in a statement. The alleged operation lasted from at least January 2010 to May 2015, the department said. The turbofan engine was a joint project between unnamed French aerospace manufacturer and a U.S.-based company, according to DOJ. The Chinese intelligence operation breached the networks of the French manufacturer, as well as those of companies based in Arizona, Massachusetts and Oregon, the department said. The indictment returned by a grand jury in the Southern District of California lays out the hackers’ alleged tradecraft in detail. “The hackers used a […]

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Chinese spy extradited to U.S. on economic espionage charges

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A Chinese intelligence official has been extradited to the United States to face charges of economic espionage, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday. Yanjun Xu, a Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) official, is accused of trying to steal trade secrets from multiple American aerospace and aviation companies. For more than four years, beginning in December 2013, Xu targeted leading aviation companies, including GE Aviation, according to DOJ. He paid experts working at these companies to travel to China “under the guise of asking them to deliver a university presentation,” the department said. Xu, who is also known as Zhang Hui or Qu Hui, was arrested in Belgium in April, and extradited to the United States on Tuesday, DOJ said. He will face trial in a federal court in Cincinnati. Analysts and U.S. officials say the Xu case is further evidence that, after an apparent lull following a 2015 U.S.-China agreement […]

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DOJ official: Whether they’re extradited or not, indicting foreign hackers is important

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Even if foreign government hackers never see the inside of a U.S. courtroom, bringing criminal charges against them is still a key prong in American deterrence policy, a top Department of Justice official said Thursday. “Imagine a world … in which there are no criminal charges” and the private sector is left to levy the allegations themselves, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Hickey said at the CyberNext conference in Washington, D.C. “What message does that send to a foreign hacker or the government he works for?” In a series of cases in which nation-state hackers charged by DOJ remain at large, “all of those charges served a greater purpose” beyond apprehending the alleged perpetrators, Hickey said. The indictments have enabled other U.S. responses such as sanctions as well as joining with allies to call out state-sponsored hacking, he said. Hickey spoke hours after the DOJ announced criminal charges against seven Russian military intelligence officers […]

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Case involving ‘AlfabetoVirtual’ website defacements ends in guilty plea

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A California man accused by federal prosecutors of defacing thousands of websites belonging to the U.S. government pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two felony counts of computer fraud, the Department of Justice announced. The DOJ says that Billy Anderson, 41, admitted to more than 11,000 instances of hacking into and defacing websites belonging to the military and government, as well as businesses. Anderson allegedly conducted these operations under the alias “AlfabetoVirtual,” which would appear on the defaced websites. “This case demonstrates that those who seek to commit cyber intrusions of government websites will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Geoffrey Berman, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a statement. While the DOJ says he “took responsibility for” thousands of defacements, Anderson’s plea is for two counts in particular. In July 2015, prosecutors say he gained access to a website run by the […]

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FBI’s Crime Data Explorer: What the Numbers Say about Cybercrime

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What do the numbers say about Cybercrime?  Not much.  No one is using them.  

There is a popular quote often mis-attributed to the hero of Total Quality Management, Edward Deming:  “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage i… Continue reading FBI’s Crime Data Explorer: What the Numbers Say about Cybercrime→

Executive order creates system for ‘automatic’ sanctions on foreigners interfering with U.S. elections

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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order authorizing sanctions against foreign individual, entity or country attempting to interfere in U.S. elections, the White House announced Wednesday. The order is not public yet, so the exact details remain unknown. The text was outlined by the White House in a phone call with reporters on Wednesday morning. Some sanctions would be “automatic” in cases where federal investigators identify meddling, White House officials said. “It’s a further effort among several that the administration has made,” national security adviser John Bolton said. “It includes not just interference against election or campaign infrastructure, but it also covers the distribution of propaganda and disinformation.” The executive order requires the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to make regular assessments about potential foreign interference in the election. It also asks for reports by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security in cases interference with election […]

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Analysts expect Lazarus Group to evolve, clean up opsec

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In crossing the threshold of unmasking an alleged Lazarus Group member last week, the Department of Justice showed the efficacy of combining private digital forensics with the long arm of the law. Yet if history is any guide, experts say outing the alleged hacker will do little to curb North Korea’s behavior. Instead, research believe the group will likely clean up its operational security and continue to evolve. In the years that Eric Chien, technical director of Symantec’s Security Response, has been tracking the Pyongyang-linked hacking group, “all we’ve seen is an escalation,” he said. “They’ve only gotten more bold and more experienced in their attacks.” The charges announced Thursday by the Justice Department against North Korean computer programmer Park Jin Hyok showed slip-ups in Park’s operational security, known colloquially as OPSEC. For example, investigators were able to tie email accounts apparently used by Park’s front company in China to spearphishing and reconnaissance conducted ahead of some of Lazarus’s alleged hacking […]

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Feds Charge a Russian With Hack of 80 Million JP Morgan Customers

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The Department of Justice announced the indictment of a Russian citizen. He is the fifth man to be charged for targeting several US financial institutions between 2012 and 2015. Continue reading Feds Charge a Russian With Hack of 80 Million JP Morgan Customers→

U.S. charges North Korean hacker over Sony, WannaCry incidents

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The Department of Justice announced charges Thursday against a North Korean spy in connection with the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures and the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack. Park Jin Hyok, a North Korean computer programmer, has been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit computer-related fraud. The government alleges that Park was operating under the front company “Chosun Expo” or the “Korean Expo Joint Venture,” in addition to activities conducted on behalf of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau. The complaint says along side the attacks on Sony, Park was part of a group that also attacked AMC Theaters, U.K.-based independent production company Mammoth Screen around the same time as the Sony Pictures hack. Additionally, the government alleges that Park was instrumental in attacks on defense contractor Lockheed Martin and the Bank of Bangladesh. The latter incident saw $81 million stolen through the […]

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