It underscores the extent to which scientific innovation has been a top target for foreign governments and criminal hackers looking to know what companies are developing during the pandemic.
In this case, the hackers researched vulnerabilities in the computer networks of biotech firms and diagnostic companies that were developing vaccines, testing kits and antiviral drugs.
The charges are the latest in a series of aggressive Trump Administration actions targeting China.
They come as President Donald Trump, his re-election prospects damaged by the coronavirus outbreak, has blamed China for the pandemic and as Administration officials have accelerated their warnings about alleged efforts by Beijing to steal intellectual property through hacking and to seek to influence American policy.
The hacking began more than 10 years ago, with targets including pharmaceutical, solar and medical device companies but also political dissidents, activists and clergy in the United States, China and Hong Kong, federal authorities said.
In some instances, according to the indictment, the hackers provided an officer for a Chinese intelligence service with whom they worked email accounts and passwords belonging to clergymen, dissidents and pro-democracy activists who could then be targeted.
The officer, in turn, provided malicious software after one of the hackers struggled to compromise the mail server of a Burmese human rights group.
The two defendants are not in custody, and federal officials conceded that they were not likely to step foot in an American courtroom.
But the indictment carries important symbolic and deterrence value for the Justice Department, which decided that publicly calling out the behaviour was more worthwhile than waiting for the unlikely scenario in which the defendants would travel to the US and risk arrest.
The charges were brought as Trump administration officials, including national security adviser Robert O'Brien and Attorney General William Barr, have delivered public warnings about what they say are Chinese Government efforts to use hacking and other tools to steal trade secrets for Beijing's financial benefit.
The hacking is part of what Assistant Attorney-General John Demers, the Justice Department's top national security official, described as a sweeping effort to "rob, replicate and replace" strategy for technological development.
In addition, he said, "China is providing a safe haven for criminal hackers who, as in this case, are hacking in part for their own personal gain but willing to help the state — and on call to do so."
The charges are the first from the Justice Department accusing foreign hackers of targeting scientific innovation related to the coronavirus, though US and Western intelligence agencies have warned for months about those efforts.
Last week, authorities in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom accused a hacking group with links to Russian intelligence of trying to target research on the disease.
The indictment describes multiple efforts by the hackers to snoop on biotech firms and other companies engaged in coronavirus-related research, though it does not accuse them of having success in any theft.
- AP
