WASHINGTON — The U.S. Division of Justice mentioned on Tuesday {that a} Chinese language state-sponsored contract hacker was arrested final week in Italy on the request of Washington, however the arrested man claimed he’s a sufferer of mistaken id.
Xu Zewei, 33, was arrested on July 3, the Justice Division mentioned, including a nine-count indictment was unsealed on Tuesday within the Southern District of Texas alleging the involvement of that particular person and a co-defendant in laptop intrusions between February 2020 and June 2021.
Xu was arrested in Milan, Italy, and can face extradition proceedings, the DOJ mentioned in an announcement.
It alleged China’s ministry of state safety had directed theft of Covid-19 analysis and the exploitation of Microsoft MSFT.O e-mail software program vulnerabilities.
The Chinese language authorities has beforehand denied allegations of being concerned. Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, mentioned on Tuesday that China opposes all types of cyber crimes, including that “China has neither the necessity nor the intention to accumulate vaccines by way of so-called theft.”
Xu’s lawyer mentioned on Tuesday that he’s a sufferer of mistaken id, that his surname is sort of frequent in China and that his cell phone had been stolen in 2020.
The 33-year-old IT supervisor at a Shanghai firm appeared on Tuesday earlier than an appeals court docket in Milan, which is able to resolve whether or not to ship him to america. The person was arrested final week after he arrived at Milan’s Malpensa airport for a vacation in Italy along with his spouse.
U.S. authorities allege that he was a part of a crew of hackers who tried to entry a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by the College of Texas in 2020.
The DOJ additionally mentioned that in 2021, he was a part of a cyber-espionage group often called Hafnium, which has alleged ties to the Chinese language authorities and which “exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in U.S. techniques to steal extra analysis.”
Hafnium focused over 60,000 U.S. entities, in line with the DOJ.
The fees listed on the arrest warrant have been wire fraud and aggravated id theft, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and unauthorized entry to protected computer systems.
