US imposes sanctions on Chinese hackers for large-scale breach in 2020

The United States government has announced the imposition of sanctions on the Chinese cybersecurity company Sichuan Silence and its representative due to a large-scale hacking of computers around the world, including in the United States.

This is stated in the official statement of the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of the Treasury (OFAC).

«Today, OFAC imposes sanctions on the cybersecurity company Sichuan Silence Information Technology Company Ltd and its representative Guan Tianfeng in China for their role in hacking tens of thousands of firewalls around the world in April 2020», the report said.

In particular, between April 22 and 25, 2020, they infected approximately 81,000 firewalls belonging to thousands of companies around the world with malware. Their goal was to steal data, including usernames and passwords. In addition, the attackers tried to infect the victims' systems with the Ragnarok ransomware.

It is noted that the list of targets of the hacker attacks included American companies that are part of critical infrastructure.

At the same time, the US Department of Justice published an indictment against Guan Tianfeng, and the US State Department announced a reward of up to $10 million for useful information about Sichuan Silence or its representative.