Feds Charge Chinese Hackers With Ripping Off Video Game Loot From 9 Companies

For years, a group of Chinese hackers known variously as Barium, Winnti, or APT41 has carried out a unique mix of sophisticated hacking activities that has puzzled the cybersecurity researchers tracking them. At times they appear focused on the usual state-sponsored espionage, believed to be working in the service of the Chinese Ministry of State Security. At other times their attacks looked more like traditional cybercrime. Now a set of federal indictments has called out those intruders by name, and cast their activities in a new light. Five Chinese hackers are accused of a sprawling scheme to break into the networks of hundreds of global companies in a broad range of industries, as well as think tanks, universities, foreign government agencies, and the accounts of Hong Kong government officials and pro-democracy activists.