The newest exposed monikers used by the accused Chinese Military in cyber crimes are Jack Wong = Ugly Gorrilia = Wang Dong; Sun Kai Liang = Jack Sun = Sun Kailiang; Wen Xin Yu = WinXYHappy = WinXY =Lao Win = Wen Xinyu; Huang Zhen Yu = hzy_lhx = Huan Zhen Zhenyu; Gu Chun Hui = KandyGoo = Gu Chunhui. An indictment by the US District Court in the Western District of Pennsylvania names the individuals from the People’s Liberation Army (“PLA”) suspected of hacking into commercial entities located in the Western District of Pennsylvania and stealing information that would be useful to their competitors in China.
In series of events starting in February of 2013 with Mandiant revealing the PLA involvement in cyber spying followed by very similar activities alleged and leaked by Edward Snowden regarding the cyber spying activities of the NSA against foreign nationals and governments, what I would call the new Cyber War is now escalating again with the revelation by the US Department of Justice of its findings and indictment of five Chinese military officers for cyber crimes.
The debate is on whether the indictments will lead to any real prosecutions or if they will only feed the fire and raise the heat in the dialog between the US and China regarding hacking and cyber spying. We will all need to stay tuned to see what the outcomes will be.