U.S. Justice Department Charges China’s Hackers-for-Hire Working IT Contractor i-Soon
he U.S. Justice Department has charged ten Chinese nationals for acting as hackers-for-hire for the Chinese government.
The defendants worked for Chinese IT contractor i-Soon, which is accused of offering hacking services for China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and Ministry of State Security (MSS).
According to the FBI, the hackers compromised “US-based critics of the Chinese government and Chinese dissidents, a US news organization, a large US-based religious organization, multiple governments in Asia, and US federal and state government agencies.”
The DOJ says i-Soon was paid up to $75,000 for each email account that was breached.
“i-Soon and its employees, to include the defendants, generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue as a key player in the PRC’s hacker-for-hire ecosystem,” the Justice Department says. “In some instances, i-Soon conducted computer intrusions at the request of the MSS or MPS, including cyber-enabled transnational repression at the direction of the MPS officer defendants.
In other instances, i-Soon conducted computer intrusions on its own initiative and then sold, or attempted to sell, the stolen data to at least 43 different bureaus of the MSS or MPS in at least 31 separate provinces and municipalities in China. i-Soon charged the MSS and MPS between approximately $10,000 and $75,000 for each email inbox it successfully exploited. i-Soon also trained MPS employees how to hack independently of i-Soon and offered a variety of hacking methods for sale to its customers.”
The FBI notes that i-Soon is just one of many Chinese security firms contracted by the Chinese government to carry out hacking operations against its targets.
“China’s InfoSec ecosystem flourishes because China’s government agencies, including its primary intelligence service the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and its domestic police agency the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), weaponize InfoSec companies by tasking companies that advertise legitimate cybersecurity services to also use their expertise to gain unauthorized access to victim networks to collect for China’s intelligence services,” the Bureau says.
“This ecosystem of InfoSec companies and freelance hackers enables and encourages indiscriminate global cyber activity, while providing the Chinese government with a layer of plausible deniability.”
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