The US Attorney General William Barr has charged four officers belonging the People’s Liberation Army’s 54th Research Institute. The charges allege responsibility for the Equifax hack which occurred in 2017. The personal data of up to 147 million Americans was compromised by the attack. Some in Canada and the UK were also caught up in the attack. The four are: Wang Qian, Xu Ke, Liu Lei and Wu Zhiyong. Richard Smith, the CEO of Equifax resigned a month after the attack admitting that there may have been failings in security. There have been no signs so far of the customer details being used for criminal purposes, but the huge swathe of personal information could be used by the Chinese state and intelligence services in numerous other ways.
