(TheProudRepublic.com) – In a high-profile crackdown on a giant cybercrime scheme that could have been used by America’s foreign enemies, the authorities have busted a citizen of Communist China managing a residential proxy service that infiltrated millions of computers globally and was employed in criminal actions causing financial losses in the billions of dollars.
See the FBI’s tweet about the Chinese hacker’s arrest below!
According to the prosecution, 35-year-old YunHe Wang developed “911 S5” in 2014, a service that facilitated cybercriminals in executing a variety of illegal activities including ransomware attacks, fraud, cyberattacks, child exploitation, and bomb threats.
Wang utilized a combination of virtual private network services and illicit copies of software to install malware on users’ computers, CyberScoop reports.
He subsequently sold access to the compromised IP addresses of these devices to cybercriminals for a fee, amassing approximately $99 million for himself from 2018 to July 2022.
In 2022, the exposure of 911 S5 led Wang to reformulate the service under the name “CloudRouter.”
The Department of Justice reports that Wang’s proxy service breached millions of Windows computers globally, resulting in 19 million unique IP addresses being compromised, including nearly 614,000 within the United States.
The use of compromised U.S. IP addresses is particularly significant for cybercrime, as U.S. infrastructure is generally more trusted internationally, a senior FBI official explained on Wednesday.
“American citizens didn’t know that their IP space was being utilized to attack U.S. businesses or defraud the U.S. government,” the official declared.
He emphasized the ease of accessing financial institutions’ online accounts in the U.S. using an American IP address and noted that by providing these IP addresses to cybercriminals, 911 S5 significantly aided various criminal operations.
While the FBI has yet to confirm if state-backed hackers utilized the 911 S5 service, Leatherman mentioned, as both a law enforcement and intelligence agency, the FBI is “always concerned and looking to remove infrastructure from both criminal actors and nation states.”
Wang was arrested on May 24 in Singapore, and efforts are underway with local authorities to extradite him to the U.S., as Leatherman disclosed.
Wang faces multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit computer fraud, substantive computer fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, with potential imprisonment up to 65 years.
Additionally, Wang and two collaborators, Jingping Liu and Yanni Zheng, were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for their involvement in the operation.
Today, the DOJ announced the arrest of a Chinese national who amassed millions of hijacked residential IP addresses and facilitated billions of dollars in unemployment and pandemic relief fraud. Learn about the investigation by the #FBI and its partners: https://t.co/6ZDjo8knal
— FBI (@FBI) May 29, 2024
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