US Accuses China of Using Criminal Hackers in Cyber darkreading.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from darkreading.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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The U.S. has formed a coalition with its allies and other partners to identify and condemn malicious cyber activities orchestrated by China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), the White House said Monday, warning it is weighing additional measures to hold Beijing accountable for its actions.
The MSS, China’s secret police, knowingly uses criminal contract hackers to conduct unsanctioned cyber operations around the globe, including for their own personal profit, through “cyber-enabled extortion, crypto-jacking, and theft,” the Biden administration said in a statement. State-affiliated cyber operators are also known to have conducted ransomware operations against private companies that have included ransom demands of millions of dollars, it said.
An alert on a suspected attack by state-backed Chinese hackers from the Department of Homeland Security s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in April.
The White House is publicly blaming China for an attack on Microsoft s Exchange email server software that compromised tens of thousands of computers worldwide, allowing hackers to gain access to troves of
sensitive data.
Separately, the Department of Justice announced Monday that a federal grand jury in May had indicted Chinese nationals accused of working with official sanction from Beijing to break into computer systems belonging to U.S. companies, universities and governments.
computers with malware
that secretly monitored systems belonging to small businesses, local and state governments and some military contractors.