FBI Detains Shanghai Native from China over Malware Distribution

The Department of Justice (DoJ), August 21, accused Yu Pingan a Chinese national, aged 36, of allegedly conniving towards attacking the PC-networks belonging to 3 US companies, names not disclosed. Pingan received assistance of 2 other individuals, also Chinese nationals.

Shanghai native, Pingan was arrested late August 21 from the Los Angeles International Airport. Pingan was charged with utilizing hacking tools among which was malware linked with an assault against US government PCs of the Personnel Management Office along with several insurance firms, like OPM and Anthem.

According to federal officials, the malware would infect firms situated in Arizona, Massachusetts, Los Angeles and San Diego between 2012 and 2014.

A formal indictment indicated that officials charged Pingan along with the 2 conspirators with contaminating 4 American organizations with one backdoor Trojan known as Sakula. The United States Justice Department called Pingan certain "malware broker" as well as accused him of distributing the tool, along with 4 hacking charges. United States officials neither charged Pingan with developing Sakula nor breaking into the systems of Anthem or OPM. Bleepingcomputer.com posted this on the Web dated August 26, 2017.

Experts have found a connection between Sakula and a hacking attempt on the Office of Personnel Management. After targeting the government agency during 2015, the assault led to revelation of over 21.5m U.S citizens' personal information related to their application for security approvals so they could join the government's workforce.

It wasn't Yu alone in the act for, he had co-conspirators operating from China, albeit the DoJ hasn't explicitly identified them. The Justice Department claims that Yu along with co-conspirators within People's Republic of China utilized Sakula name of one malware tool for carrying out their operations.

According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the agency traced the hacking tools and Internet addresses of Pingan and co-conspirators to track their attacks. It also watched their communications on the Web of 2011 for the same purpose. Pingan's arrest as well as indictment is likely to show clues of the aforementioned involvement that mayn't be of the China government but of one citizen of that country.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/1/2017