Equifax breach: US indicts four Chinese ‘hackers’

Washington: (AFP) -The US Justice Department announced indictments of four members of China´s People´s Liberation Army for alleged involvement in the massive 2017 hack of the database of giant US credit rating agency Equifax.

The hackers are accused of stealing the sensitive personal information on some 145 million Americans, in one of the world´s largest ever data breaches, said Attorney General Bill Barr.

“This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,” he said.

The Justice Department indictment charged four members of the Chinese army´s 54th Research Institute — Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei — with multiple counts of hacking, computer fraud, economic espionage and wire fraud.