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U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh Indicts 3 Chinese Hackers Suspected in Cyberattacks

The federal government has filed its first indictments against three Chinese hackers for their alleged involvement in a phishing scam and malware attack.

(TNS) –– A trio of Chinese hackers used phishing scams and malware to attack Moody's Analytics, Siemens AG and Trimble Inc., a GPS manufacturer, according to a federal indictment filed in Pittsburgh and unsealed Monday.

Acting U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania Soo C. Song charged Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao and Xia Lei with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse, conspiracy to steal trade secrets, wire fraud and identity theft.

The U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI held a news conference at 1 p.m. Monday to detail the allegations.

Siemens has 13 offices in Western Pennsylvania, including a facility in the Westmoreland Business & Research Park in Upper Burrell and Washington Township, an automated rail factory in Munhall and East Pittsburgh and health care offices in Green Tree and Pittsburgh. A computer network in at least one of those offices was breached in the attacks, according to the indictment.

The indictment was filed in September.

The trio worked at or with a Chinese cybersecurity firm in Guangzhou. They're accused of stealing emails, employee usernames and passwords, proprietary commercial data and important documents, according to the indictment.

Between June 2015 and August 2015, about 407 gigabytes of data were stolen from Siemens' network. The emails of an economist working for Moody's were hacked and forwarded to the three. About 275 megabytes of computer files were stolen from Trimble, many with confidential or proprietary information and trade secretes about a new project by the company.

©2017 The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Greensburg, Pa.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.