10 Chinese nationals charged with hacking U.S. Treasury and others: Justice Department

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced charges Wednesday against 10 Chinese citizens who are accused of cyber-hacking to steal data from the Treasury Department and other organizations worldwide.

The State Department is offering a $10 million reward for information about the hackers, who remain at large.

The suspects include two officers of China’s Ministry of Public Security; employees of Anxun Information Technology, which is known as i-Soon; and members of Advanced Persistent Threat 27 (APT 27), according to court records.

“For years, these 10 defendants – two of whom we allege are PRC officials – used sophisticated hacking techniques to target religious organizations, journalists, and government agencies, all to gather sensitive information for the use of the” Chinese government, Matthew Podolsky, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

The i-Soon staffers allegedly gained access to federal and state agencies including Treasury in late 2024, multiple foreign ministries in Asia and a large U.S. religious organization, according to court records.

Officials said targets of the hacking included the Defense Intelligence Agency; the Commerce Department; the foreign ministries of Taiwan, South Korea, India and Indonesia; news organizations critical of China; and the New York state Assembly.

The i-Soon staffers allegedly conducted computer intrusions on its own initiative and then sold, or attempted to sell, the stolen data to at least 43 government bureaus in the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, officials said. The company charged the government between about $10,000 and $75,000 for each email inbox it successfully exploited, officials said.

Sue Bai, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said the charges exposed Chinese government agents “directing and fostering indiscriminate and reckless attacks against computers and networks worldwide.”

“We will continue to fight to dismantle this ecosystem of cyber mercenaries and protect our national security,” Bai said in a statement.

The Chinese Ministries of Public Security and State Security paid private hackers to target specific victims in a way that obscured the government’s involvement, according to court records. A network of private companies and contractors in China identified vulnerable computers, exploited them and then identified information that could be sold directly or indirectly to the Chinese government, according to court records.

A federal indictment was unsealed in New York on Wednesday charging eight i-Soon employees and two Ministry of Public Security officers with hacking email accounts, cellphones, servers and websites.

The defendants remain at large and wanted by the FBI. The State Department announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of any of the suspects. The defendants included the company's CEO, Wu Haibo, and chief operating officer, Chen Cheng.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 10 Chinese nationals charged with cyber hacking Treasury, others: DOJ