Up to $10 million could be awarded for information on the location of the Chinese hacker who targeted 81,000 computers globally.
The United States is offering a reward of up to $10 million for the capture of Guan Tianfeng, one of the most wanted hackers in the world, and is prepared to go to any lengths to find him.
In 2020, Tianfeng was charged in federal court in Hammond, Indiana, for his involvement in a global conspiracy to hack antivirus software. The whereabouts of the Chinese-born hacker are unknown.
Guan Tianfeng worked alongside a team of hackers from Sichuan Silence Information Technology. The cybercriminal discovered a zero-day vulnerability in some firewalls marketed by Sophos and exploited the vulnerability in the software.
The UK-based company markets cybersecurity products to businesses and individuals. It distributed malware that exploited the vulnerability to steal information from infected computers and encrypt files if the victim tried to avoid being hacked.
The United States requests cooperation to find the hacker.
Guan Tianfeng infected nearly 81,000 machines with antivirus software distributed through Sophos worldwide. The cyberattack affected a government agency in the US state of Indiana, according to the FBI agent in charge of the investigation.
The hacker and his team were professionals. They registered and used domains specifically created to appear to be controlled by Sophos, such as sophosfirewallupdate.com, the Justice Department said in its indictment.
The British company discovered the cyberattack almost immediately, but it took two days to patch its customers’ firewalls. Hackers had enough time to modify the ransomware malware and continue distributing it.
The FBI has warned that this is not the first time hackers from China have attacked government agency devices. The US State Department is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his identification or location.