A hacker who allegedly carried out Chinese hacking was extradited to the US

A man accused of carrying out cyber attacks on behalf of the Chinese government has been extradited to the United States, and could face up to ten years in prison if convicted.

Last year, the US Department of Justice scolded Xu Zewei is working as a contractor for the Chinese Ministry of Defense to carry out several cyber attacks. Prosecutors say Xu and his associate Zhang Yu targeted several US universities in early 2020 to steal research related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pair also reportedly hacked thousands of servers running Microsoft Exchange since March 2021, as part of an “indiscriminate” campaign carried out by a Chinese-backed hacking group known as Hafniumand so Silk Typhoon.

Xu was arrested in Italy last year after being questioned by US authorities. His lawyer in Italy, Simona Candido, told TechCrunch that Xu was extradited to the United States on Saturday, and is now in custody in Houston, Texas.

According to the US Bureau of Prisons website, a man with the same name is incarcerated at the Federal Detention Center in Houston.

After this article was published, the Department of Justice he announced Xu’s extradition in a press release.

Xu’s attorney in the United States, Dan Cogdell, told TechCrunch that Xu pleaded not guilty to all charges at a court hearing Monday morning.

According to court records, Xu made his first appearance in federal court and was remanded in custody.

As the Department of Justice once said it first announced the charges against the defendants, Xu allegedly worked for the Shanghai Powerock Network, a Chinese company that prosecutors said had been “robbered” from Beijing. Mr Xu and other criminals are said to have reported what they were doing to the Chinese authorities in Shanghai.

Along with Zhang, he was part of a Hafnium group that allegedly took advantage of undetected vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange servers for the purpose of hacking into several American corporationsincluding defense contractors, law firms, think tanks, and infectious disease researchers.

According to prosecutors, the Hafnium hackers targeted more than 60,000 organizations in the US and succeeded in hacking more than 12,700 of them.

China’s embassy in Washington, DC did not respond to a request for comment.

The Financial Times report that China’s Foreign Ministry opposed Xu’s extradition and accused the US government of “fabricating cases.”

For years, the U.S. government has prosecuted Chinese people suspected of embezzlement, many of which are not numerous. In 2022, Yanjun Xu he was judged serving 20 years in prison for racketeering in what the DOJ said was the first case in which a Chinese intelligence officer was extradited to the United States.

This article has been updated to include the DOJ’s announcement of Xu’s release, information from new court documents, and comments from Xu’s attorney.