The Washington Post is reporting that in the weeks leading up to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States, police arrested a number of hackers accused by U.S. authorities for “having stolen commercial secrets from U.S. firms to be sold or passed along to Chinese state-run companies.”
The announcement comes as U.S. officials were considering applying sanctions to Chinese individuals and organizations associated with stealing trade secrets. According to the Post, “experts estimate that Chinese industrial hacking costs U.S. firms tens of billions of dollars annually.” U.S. law enforcement agencies have been pulling together a list of people that they wanted to see arrested, which was then passed along to the Chinese as a test to see if they were serious about cracking down on cyber espionage, reports the Post.
The full article can be found here.