The United States on Tuesday offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of a Chinese man and other suspects wanted for breaching computer network security gates (firewalls). As the AFP agency specified in its report, the US State Department assumes that 30-year-old Quan Qianfeng lives in the Chinese province of Sichuan. In the US, the man was charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
According to the indictment, Kuan and his accomplices as employees of Sichuan Silence Information Technology Co Ltd. allegedly exploited a vulnerability in firewalls sold by British cybersecurity company Sophos, and infected tens of thousands of network security devices with information-stealing malware.
In April 2020, approximately 81,000 firewall devices were simultaneously attacked worldwide to steal data, including usernames and passwords, while attempting to infect computers with ransomware, the indictment added. There were more than 23,000 firewalls in the United States, 36 of which protected “critical infrastructure company systems,” the US Treasury Department said.
US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Herbert Stapleton emphasized that had Sophos not quickly identified the vulnerability and deployed a comprehensive response, the damage could have been much more severe. The indictment says that data obtained by the hackers was sold by Sichuan Silence to Chinese companies and government entities, including the Ministry of Public Security.
