Chinese national sentenced to prison for helping foreign hackers tap into military secrets

A CHINESE businessman who admitted to participating in a years-long conspiracy that involved Chinese military officers hacking into the computer networks of major U.S. defense contractors in order to steal military technical data was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison.

Su Bin

Chinese national Su Bin, who is also known as Stephen Su and Stephen Subin, 51, was sentenced July 13 by U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder of the Central District of California.

“Su Bin’s sentence is a just punishment for his admitted role in a conspiracy with hackers from the People's Liberation Army Air Force to illegally access and steal sensitive U.S. military information,” said Assistant Attorney General John P.  Carlin. “Su assisted the Chinese military hackers in their efforts to illegally access and steal designs for cutting-edge military aircraft that are indispensable to our national defense," said Assistant Attorney General John P.  Carlin.

 “Over the course of years, this defendant sought to undermine the national security of the United States by seeking out information that would benefit a foreign government and providing that country with information it had never before seen."  said U.S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker of the Central District of California. 

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Su told his co-conspirators – military officers in China – whom to target, which files to steal and why the information they stole was significant. During the course of the conspiracy, Su and his co-conspirators stole sensitive military and export-controlled data and sent the stolen information to China.

On March 23, Su admitted that he conspired with two persons in China from October 2008 to March 2014 to hack protected computer networks in the United States – including computers belonging to the Boeing Company in Orange County, California – to obtain sensitive military information and to export that information illegally from the United States to China.

A criminal complaint filed in 2014 and subsequent indictments filed in Los Angeles charged Su, a China-based businessman in the aviation and aerospace fields, for his role in the criminal conspiracy to steal military technical data, including data relating to the C-17 strategic transport aircraft and certain fighter jets produced for the U.S. military. 

Su was initially arrested in Canada in July 2014 on a warrant issued in relation to this case. Su ultimately waived extradition and consented to be conveyed to the U.S. in February 2016.