Yu Pingan, identified yesteryear the way equally the pseudonym "GoldSun," was arrested at Los Angeles international airdrome on Midweek when he was arrived inwards the U.S. to attend a conference, CNN reported.
The 36-year-old Chinese national is said to expression upward charges inwards connective amongst the Sakula malware, which was non exclusively used to breach the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) simply besides breached Anthem wellness insurance draw solid inwards 2015.
The Anthem breach resulted inwards the theft of personal medical records of around lxxx 1000000 electrical current together with old customers of the company.
Sakula is a sophisticated remote access Trojan (RAT) that was known to last developed yesteryear Deep Panda, a China-based advanced persistent threat grouping (known equally APT19) together with could permit an assaulter to remotely gain command over a targeted system.
Pingan's arrest was like to that of Marcus Hutchins, a 22-year-old British safety researcher who has been defendant of creating together with distributing the infamous Kronos banking Trojan betwixt 2014 together with 2015.
According to an indictment filed inwards the US District Court for the Southern District of California on 21 August, Pingan has been charged amongst 1 count of the Computer Fraud together with Abuse Act together with is besides defendant of conspiracy to commit offence or defraud the United States.
The indictment suggests Pingan collaborated amongst ii unnamed hackers to teach together with operate malware to acquit cyber attacks against at to the lowest degree four unnamed US companies from Apr 2011 through Jan 2014.
"Defendant YU together with co-conspirators inwards the PRC [People's Republic of China] would constitute an infrastructure of domain names, IP addresses, accounts amongst meshwork service providers, together with websites to facilitate hacks of calculator networks operated yesteryear companies inwards the U.S. together with elsewhere," the indictment reads.Although the indictment filed doesn't mention the companies that were targeted, it does banker's bill that the affected companies were headquartered inwards San Diego, California; Massachusetts; Arizona; together with Los Angeles, California.
Pingan's business office inwards those cyber attacks was to furnish advanced malware to other unnamed Chinese crooks for hacks against U.S. organisations.
Pingan remains behind bars pending a courtroom hearing on his detention adjacent week.
