The Department of Justice has indicted four members of China’s military with carrying out a massive hack into Equifax in 2017.

The Equifax breach compromised the data of approximately 145 million Americans, and is one of the largest hacks in history.

Attorney General William Barr called the hack “a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people.”

Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The Department of Justice charged four members of China’s military with hacking into the credit-reporting agency Equifax and stealing nearly 150 million Americans’ data, Attorney General William Barr said Monday.

The Equifax breach is one of the largest hacks in history and led to a congressional probe as well as the resignation of former CEO Richard Smith. Equifax also agreed to pay up to $700 million to settle federal and state investigations into how it handled the breach.

According to the DOJ announcement Monday, the four Chinese officers allegedly compromised Equifax’s servers by exploiting an Apache vulnerability, obtaining the names, birth dates, and social security numbers of nearly 145 million Americans – about half of all Americans.

The nine-count indictment was handed down by a federal grand jury in Atlanta, and implied that there may have been more co-conspirators within China’s People’s Liberation Army. The four defendants named are charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud, economic espionage, and wire fraud.

Barr said the DOJ believes the information was harvested to feed China’s development of artificial intelligence tools.

“This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,” Barr said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Equifax hack fits a disturbing and unacceptable pattern of state-sponsored computer intrusions and thefts by China.”

Lees ook op Business Insider 28 winkels dicht bij ketens Miss Etam, Claudia Sträter, Expresso en Steps – 200 banen minder bij doorstart

The indictment also alleges that the hackers stole trade secrets and intellectual property from Equifax. According to Barr, the hackers took great lengths to hide their identity, routing traffic through 34 servers located in nearly 20 countries.

“In short, this was an organized and remarkably brazen criminal heist of sensitive information of nearly half of all Americans, as well as the hard work and intellectual property of an American company, by a unit of the Chinese military,” Barr said.

Equifax is a consumer credit reporting agency headquartered in Atlanta, which sells credit monitoring and fraud prevention services.

“We are grateful to the Justice Department and the FBI for their tireless efforts in determining that the military arm of China was responsible for the cyberattack on Equifax in 2017,” an Equifax spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider. “It is reassuring that our federal law enforcement agencies treat cybercrime – especially state-sponsored crime – with the seriousness it deserves. The attack on Equifax was an attack on U.S. consumers as well as the United States.”

Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and co-chair of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, lauded the DOJ indictment in a statement but also said that Equifax is responsible for bolstering its security to prevent such breaches. Warner, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, has introduced a bill to hold credit reporting agencies accountable for breaches of customers’ data.

“The indictment does not detract from the myriad of vulnerabilities and process deficiencies that we saw in Equifax’s systems and response to the hack. A company in the business of collecting and retaining massive amounts of Americans’ sensitive personal information must act with the utmost care – and face any consequences that arise from that failure,” Warner said.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.