{"id":237661,"date":"2026-04-28T03:57:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T07:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/28\/chinese-silk-typhoon-hacker-extradited-to-u-s-over-covid-research-cyberattacks\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T20:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T00:00:11","slug":"chinese-silk-typhoon-hacker-extradited-to-u-s-over-covid-research-cyberattacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/28\/chinese-silk-typhoon-hacker-extradited-to-u-s-over-covid-research-cyberattacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Silk Typhoon Hacker Extradited to U.S. Over COVID Research Cyberattacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/04\/chinese-silk-typhoon-hacker-extradited.html\">Chinese Silk Typhoon Hacker Extradited to U.S. Over COVID Research Cyberattacks<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/04\/chinese-silk-typhoon-hacker-extradited.html\">https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/04\/chinese-silk-typhoon-hacker-extradited.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-28 03:57:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"thehackernews.com\">thehackernews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"p-author\">\ue804<span class=\"author\">Ravie Lakshmanan<\/span>\ue802<span class=\"author\">Apr 28, 2026<\/span><\/span><span class=\"p-tags\">Cyber Espionage \/ Vulnerability<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A Chinese national accused of being a member of the Silk Typhoon hacking group has been extradited to the U.S. from Italy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Xu Zewei, 34, was arrested in July 2025 by Italian authorities for his alleged links to the Chinese state-sponsored threat group and for orchestrating cyber attacks against American organizations and government agencies between February 2020 and June 2021, including breaking into systems at a Texas university to steal COVID-19 vaccine information.<\/p>\n<p>He was charged with nine counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to cause damage to and obtain information by unauthorized access to protected computers, as well as committing aggravated identity theft.<\/p>\n<p>Xu, along with co-defendant and Chinese national Zhang Yu, is said to have undertaken the attacks under directions issued by the Ministry of State Security&#8217;s (MSS) Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB). Some of these attacks weaponized then zero-days in Microsoft Exchange Server, a threat activity cluster that Microsoft tracked as Hafnium, to breach targets and deploy web shells for remote administration.<\/p>\n<p>Xu worked for a company named Shanghai Powerock Network Co. Ltd. when the attacks were carried out, per the indictment. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said Powerock was one of many &#8220;enabling&#8221; companies in China that conducted hacking operations for the government.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In early 2020, Xu and his co-conspirators hacked and otherwise targeted U.S.-based universities, immunologists, and virologists conducting research into COVID\u201119 vaccines, treatment, and testing,&#8221; the DoJ added. &#8220;The charges further allege that beginning in late 2020, Xu and his co-conspirators exploited certain vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server, a widely-used Microsoft product for sending, receiving, and storing email messages.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>However, the defendant has repeatedly denied any involvement in Chinese government hacking operations, claiming his arrest was&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/04\/chinese-silk-typhoon-hacker-extradited.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chinese Silk Typhoon Hacker Extradited to U.S. Over COVID Research Cyberattacks https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/04\/chinese-silk-typhoon-hacker-extradited.html Publish Date: 2026-04-28&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEgtGdvCIS6jOvz5WvlLwD34DqwHSyM4DaERfLDinlvQ4UfRqBUsjPp3o-sOVZL-gfqCHrsz53BMM3-fdFlaCLtMLshTfU9ncVM4qqkF9dzjsi9sF8XdMlbXvJSpDUSXdP_h4KN01TbwhT-10z626gUmlgrE4MlyM5lBTmZDKkB-g-xoMVgDFmM0b5sCCzQr\/s1600\/covid-hacker.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[30,35,27],"class_list":["post-237661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-breach","tag-hacker","tag-vulnerability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237661"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237663,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237661\/revisions\/237663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}