LOS ANGELES — Chinese intelligence officers and hackers working for them have been charged with commercial espionage that included trying to steal information on commercial…
LOS ANGELES — Chinese intelligence officers and hackers working for them have been charged with commercial espionage that included trying to steal information on commercial jet engines, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
The indictments named two officers working for the Nanjing-based foreign intelligence arm of China’s Ministry of State Security and six other defendants who allegedly conspired from 2010 to 2015 to steal sensitive turbofan engine technology used in commercial aviation.
The hackers used spear phishing to deploy malware and other means to intrude into a French aerospace company that was developing the engines with a U. S. company, prosecutors said. The suspects also hacked into aerospace companies in Massachusetts, Oregon and Arizona that manufactured engine parts.
A Chinese state-owned aerospace company was working at the time to develop a similar type of engine for use in commercial aircraft.
“This action is yet another example of criminal efforts by the (Ministry of State Security) to facilitate the theft of private data for China’s commercial gain,” U.
