Chinese army officers charged in huge Equifax hack
The US has charged four Chinese military officers over the large cyber-attack on credit rating giant Equifax.
More than 147 million Americans were affected in 2017 when hackers stole sensitive personal data including names and addresses.
Some UK and Canadian customers were also affected.
Announcing the indictments, Attorney General William Barr called the hack "one of the most important data breaches in history".
According to court documents, the four are allegedly members of the People's Liberation Army's 54th Research Institute, a component of the Chinese military.
They spent weeks within the company's system, breaking into security networks and stealing personal data, the documents said.
The nine-count indictment also accuses the group of stealing trade secrets including data compilation and database designs.
The whereabouts of the suspects is unknown and it's highly unlikely that they're going to stand trial within the US.
FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said: "We can't take them into custody, try them during a court of law, and lock them up - not today, anyway."
What happened in 2017?
Equifax said hackers accessed the knowledge between mid-May and therefore the end of July 2017 when the corporate discovered the breach.
The accused allegedly routed traffic through 34 servers in nearly 20 countries to undertake and conceal their true location.
The credit rating firm holds data on quite 820 million consumers also as information on 91 million businesses.
