The Chinese head of a yet-unnamed aviation company has been sentenced to four years in prison for hacking into rival defence contractors in an effort to acquire military defence intelligence.
Su Bin, 51, also known as Stephen Subin, admitted to a California court that from October 2008 to March 2014 he had engaged in a years-long conspiracy with officers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to “illegally access and steal sensitive US military information,” according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
Su pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to gain unauthorised access to a protected computer and violating the Arms Export Control Act.
“Over the course of years, this defendant sought to undermine the national security of the United States by seeking out information that would benefit a foreign government and providing that country with information it had never before seen,” elaborated US Attorney Eileen Decker.
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Su apparently chose targets which PLA officers would then hack into and steal information from, including aerospace giant Boeing. Su would be given directory listings of files and folders by his co-conspirators. From there, Su would further direct them to the files and folders might contain valuable information and translate the stolen info from English into Chinese.
The targeted information pertained to military defence technology including F-22 fighter jets and the C-17 transport plane.
Full article: Chinese aerospace executive charged with hacking for China (SC Magazine UK)
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