U.S. prosecution has identified The Epoch Times as a target in Chinese state hackers’ years-long hacking campaign.
The Epoch Times is one of the targets.
The attackers are employees from i-Soon, a Chinese tech company that has “engaged in the numerous and widespread hacking of email accounts, cell phones, servers, and websites,” according to the Justice Department.
i-Soon used different methods to hack systems, then offered these as products to its customers, including a platform to create phishing emails, create files with malware, and clone websites of victims to induce them to submit personal information, the Justice Department said.
In May 2017, i-Soon employees allegedly broke into several email accounts belonging to The Epoch Times’ chief editor and vice president. Wang Liyu, a Ministry of Public Security officer that the Justice Department charged, gave i-Soon the username and password for The Epoch Times’ administrator account, the Justice Department said. In September 2017, according to court documents, a different Ministry of Public Security officer asked i-Soon to identify IP addresses within China that had accessed The Epoch Times to locate dissidents in China.
i-Soon had allegedly obtained the IP information through an earlier breach of the publication’s website and sold the ministry a spreadsheet identifying those details.
The hackers also allegedly attacked a separate newspaper in Manhattan in 2018 to compromise one employee’s email account, then gave the Ministry of Public Security access to the account.
Other organizations the hackers targeted include a Texas organization that focuses on promoting human rights and religious freedom in China, a research university, the New York State Assembly, foreign governments, and a U.S.-based religious leader.
The Epoch Times has been a target of the Chinese Communist Party since its founding in 2000. Distributed denial-of-service attacks, like the one described in the Justice Department document, have been regular and have temporarily shut down the publication’s website. Chinese diplomats and agents have put pressure on U.S. officials, event organizers, companies that advertise on The Epoch Times, and China-based families of The Epoch Times staff members in an effort to hinder the publication’s normal operations.
Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) said the attack on The Epoch Times was “crazy” and “unbelievable.”
“I don’t put anything past them,” she told The Epoch Times. “They are nefarious, and they’re pretty blatant in what they do.”
The Epoch Times’ CEO Janice Trey applauded U.S. authorities’ prosecution of Chinese hackers that “targeted The Epoch Times for its independent reporting.”
“For more than two decades the CCP has targeted us in a wide-ranging transnational repression campaign, which we hope gets fully exposed and the perpetrators held to account,“ she said in a statement.
“The Epoch Times is the media organization most feared by the CCP due to its unwavering commitment to truthful reporting and for its first-hand timely coverage on China, including topics that other media shy away from covering.”
