US authorities confirms arrest of Chinese language nationwide accused of stealing COVID analysis and mass-hacking e-mail servers

The U.S. Justice Division has confirmed the arrest of Chinese language nationwide Xu Zewei, an alleged prolific contract hacker who carried out cyberattacks for China. Xu was arrested in Italy on the request of U.S. prosecutors.

Xu and one other Chinese language nationwide Zhang Yu, who stays at massive, are accused in a nine-charge indictment of “hacking and stealing essential COVID-19 analysis” from U.S. universities throughout February 2020. The DOJ mentioned Xu labored for an organization referred to as Shanghai Powerock Community, which carried out hacking operations for the Chinese language authorities.

The alleged hackers are additionally accused of the mass hacks of Microsoft Alternate servers starting in March 2021. The hackers, publicly known as a bunch referred to as Hafnium, broke into greater than 60,000 self-hosted Alternate servers run by largely small companies throughout the USA, permitting the theft of personal firm mailboxes and deal with books. 

Hafnium has since launched a brand new hacking marketing campaign, dubbed Silk Storm, which researchers say is understood for hacking into massive firms and authorities companies.