U.S. authorities on Thursday accused a Chinese national visiting the United States of providing malware that has been linked to the theft of security clearance records of millions of American government employees.
Yu Pingan of Shanghai was arrested on Monday at Los Angeles International Airport after a federal criminal complaint accused him of conspiring with others wielding malicious software known as Sakula, a Justice Department spokesman said on Thursday.
The complaint said the group attacked a series of unnamed U.S. companies using Sakula, the same rare program involved in U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hacks detected in 2014 and 2015. The filing did not mention the OPM hacks.