'When companies like Equifax amass vast stores of sensitive personal information and then cut corners on security, they become irresistible targets for unfriendly regimes like China.'Д®quifax has completely overhauled its security practices since the breach and invested $1.25 billion in security improvements, according to Jamil Farshchi, the company's chief information security officer. 'There's no separating privacy and national security,' Wyden said in a statement. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, also challenged the company over its security shortcomings. 'A company in the business of collecting and retaining massive amounts of Americans' sensitive personal information must act with the utmost care - and face any consequences that arise from that failure.' 'The indictment does not detract from the myriad of vulnerabilities and process deficiencies that we saw in Equifax's systems and response to the hack,' Warner said in a statement. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, echoed that point. The company blamed the security failure on a single employee, despite the fact that the vulnerability had been known about for at least two months.ДЄ congressional committee said in a 2018 report that the hack was ' entirely preventable.'

'This data has economic value and these thefts can feed China's development of artificial intelligence tools as well as the creation of intelligence-targeting packages,' Attorney General William Barr said.ДЄt the time the hack was revealed, Equifax's then-CEO Rick Smith blamed a months-old server flaw that the company failed to patch.ДЄccording to the indictment, the four hackers took advantage of the unpatched vulnerability and infiltrated Equifax's servers on July 30, 2017. In July 2019, the credit-monitoring agency settled with the Federal Trade Commission to pay at least $575 million over its security failures. The 2017 cyberattack on Equifax affected 147.7 million Americans, and the hackers got access to names, Social Security numbers, birthdates and addresses. 'The attack on Equifax was an attack on U.S. consumers, businesses and our government,' Begor said. 'It is reassuring that our federal law enforcement agencies treat cybercrime - especially state-sponsored crime - with the seriousness it deserves, and that the Justice Department is committed to pursuing those who target U.S. In a statement, Equifax CEO Mark Begor thanked the Justice Department for its investigation and said it's increasingly difficult to protect companies from hacks by 'well-financed nation-state actors that operate outside the rule of law.' The first time was in 2018, when the US charged Chinese hackers with theft from NASA and the technology sector. This is only the second time the Justice Department has indicted Chinese military hackers, Bowdich said. The four alleged hackers behind the Equifax hack.

'It has long been an open secret that the US government and relevant departments, in violation of international law and basic norms governing international relations, have been engaging in large-scale, organized and indiscriminate cyber stealing, spying and surveillance activities on foreign governments, enterprises and individuals.'

'The Chinese government, military and relevant personnel never engage in cyber theft of trade secrets,' China's foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said on Tuesday. The Chinese embassy denied that its government was behind the Equifax hack, and called out the US government for its history of hacking other nations for espionage, including China. 'This is the largest theft of sensitive by state-sponsored hackers ever recorded,' FBI deputy director David Bowdich said at a press conference on Monday. They are charged with computer fraud, economic espionage and wire fraud. The four alleged Chinese military hackers are listed as Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei, according to the indictment. The US Justice Department on Monday charged four members of China's People's Liberation Army in connection with the Equifax hack, one of the largest data breaches in US history. Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images The Justice Department is charging four Chinese nationals for allegedly hacking Equifax.

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