Charges have been filed against Chinese national Jia Wei, accusing him of unlawfully accessing U.S. communications company networks to steal proprietary information on behalf of Chinese entities. Jia Wei is a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and was assigned to Unit 61786, which is responsible for hacking and obtaining communications and information, according to the Department of Justice.
In March 2017, Jia Wei and his co-conspirators allegedly hacked into an American company’s network shortly after the company had sued a China-based competitor for trade secret theft. The indictment states that the hackers obtained documents related to the company’s civilian and military communication devices, as well as product development information, testing plans, internal evaluations, and documents discussing the China-based competitor.
The hackers also attempted to install malicious software on the company’s network in April 2017. They continued to access the network unlawfully until May 2017.
A special grand jury convened in May 2021 returned a six-count indictment in March 2022 against Jia Wei. The charges include wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, computer intrusions, and aggravated identity theft for using an employee’s account to access the company network.
Jia Wei is known by various aliases such as “chansonJW,” “JWT,” “JWT487,” “asmikace,” “asmikace3d,” “askikace3d,” and ”haber william.” However, he has not yet been arrested. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud charges, five years for conspiracy and computer intrusion charges, and two years for aggravated identity theft.
The United States considers cyber attacks backed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a major threat to national security. PLA hackers linked with CCP have been identified as responsible for significant data breaches including Equifax hack in 2017 compromising personal information of millions of Americans; Microsoft Exchange cyberattack compromising thousands of networks; breach of government emails in 2023; ongoing “Volt Typhoon” campaign infiltrating critical American infrastructure according FBI Director Christopher Wray.
The Department of Justice announced these charges on September 17th along with updates on criminal cases resulting from its multiagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force initiative. These cases involve defendants such as a Russian national attempting illegal exportation of drones to Russia and an employee from a Chinese regime-run aerospace conglomerate trying obtain software from NASA among others.
Another individual named Song Wu has also been indicted by DOJ for running a large-scale phishing campaign impersonating U.S.-based researchers/engineers aiming at obtaining aerospace engineering trade secrets with industrial/military applications that could be used in missile/weapon development.
