Four alleged members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 54th Research Institute conspired with one another to hack vulnerable networks and access and steal the personal data of millions of customers of credit agency Equifax, according to an indictment unveiled by the US Department of Justice (DoJ).
The charges against Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei were filed by a federal grand jury in Atlanta, Georgia. They stand accused of exploiting a vulnerability in the Apache Struts Web Framework software used by Equifax’s online dispute portal, which they used to conduct reconnaissance of the wider network and obtain login credentials enabling them to go deeper still.
