Chinese national Su Bin was convicted on June 27 of hacking into the systems of several US that had major defense contracts, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The next day, he was arrested in British Columbia.
Su Bin is believed to have worked with two other individuals, who have not yet been identified, to hack into the systems of targeted businesses and obtain information about military plans from remote devices based in China.
The perpetrators allegedly gained access to data on the parts and performance of the C-17 military aircraft from Boeing, and the F-22 and F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin.
The trio carried out their activities between 2009 and 2013 and are said to have attempted to illegally sell the information to state-owned Chinese companies.
Su Bin is the owner of Lode Technologies, an aviation company based in China, with an office in Canada.
According to documents filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Su Bin's co-conspirators managed to obtain 630,000 files related to Boeing's C-17, totaling 65GB.
The two anonymous hackers infected Boeing and Lockheed machines via a phishing attack from China. Once the malicious file was executed, it communicated with a remote server for commands and instructions.
Su Bin remains in custody in Canada and awaits a hearing scheduled for July 18 in Vancouver, BC.
