Chinese National Arrested in Los Angeles for Hacking Charge in US

Charges are filed by the FBI against one Chinese malware broker known as Yu Pingan, claiming that he provides malware to hackers, including Sakula Trojan, for breaching numerous computer networks that belongs to the companies in US.

The FBI charges that Yu Pingan, known also as "GoldSun", has conspired with 2 unidentified hackers in between April 2011 and Jan. 2014 for maliciously targeting computer networks of US companies.

The filed complaint doesn't contain names of companies which were targeted, although notes that numerous companies with headquarter in Los Angeles, California; Arizona; and San Diego, California.

The filed court papers against Yu don't mention OPM, however they do suggested connection between them. Washingtonpost.com posted on August 24th, 2017, stating that OPM hack has been considered as one of the most horrible computer breaches of US govt. computer systems, since hackers can access a huge information from the security clearance forms that were filed by contractors and federal workers.

As per the criminal complaint, the suspect with other conspirators in the China will acquire and then use the malicious software tools, few of which are rare versions which got identified before by FBI and community of information security, including the malicious software tool called 'Sakula'.

Chinese authorities are denying any participation in OPM attack. Foreign Ministry of China told the Reuters in the year 2015 that "the Chinese government takes resolute strong measures against any kind of hacking attack". They also said that they oppose unjustifiable insinuations against China.

Also, Sakula is a popular tool of China-based advanced persistent threat that is nicknamed as APT 19 or Deep Panda, which was linked to both Anthem and OPM attacks by the security researchers. The 3rd company also had their website infected with very rare version of Sakula by 7th June 2013. In all the 3 cases, malware has been communicating with one single command as well as control beacon.

The charges filed against Yu, earlier concern for alleged breaches of computer in 3 US companies. Yu is accused for conspiring of committing hacking of computer for those occurrences that happened in between 2012 to 2014.

One of the subjects of US-China talks was OPM breach, and the Chinese Govt. earlier told the American diplomats that they arrested few criminals regarding this case.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/1/2017