The DOJ indicted Chinese hackers over a broad cyber attack campaign that targeted The Epoch Times as well as the U.S. government and civil groups.
NEW YORK—The Epoch Times has vowed to double down after learning the publication has been the target of a cyber attack campaign by Chinese state hackers.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) last week charged 12 Chinese state-linked hackers and law enforcement officers in widespread attacks that targeted The Epoch Times as well as U.S. government systems and civil groups.
Under the direction of two officers with the Ministry of Public Security—who have both been charged by U.S. authorities—the hackers had launched attacks that temporarily shut down The Epoch Times’ website, according to the DOJ.
They also stole emails from the publication’s chief editor and vice president and identified IP addresses from China that had accessed The Epoch Times’ website in an effort to find out where dissidents were located, authorities said.
Samuel Zhou, senior vice president of The Epoch Times, said he wasn’t surprised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) targeted the publication.
“This is the media outlet most feared by the CCP, and consequently it has been subject to its aggressive and relentless campaign to take us down,” Zhou said.
He said the CCP’s sabotage efforts will not deter The Epoch Times.
“We will not back down,” he said. “[We will] continue with our mission to expose their human rights abuses and also their campaigns to sabotage Western society.”
Zhou said the Chinese regime believes “the American way of life is a threat to its authoritarian ruling, and they want to sabotage and change it.”
He noted the regime’s ongoing influence campaign to silence dissidents in the United States.
“We will expose those things as a media to fulfill our responsibility to society and to promote press freedom,” Zhou said.
Founded in 2000 in Atlanta by Chinese dissidents who wanted to provide uncensored news about China, The Epoch Times was among the first to report on the deadly SARS pandemic in the early 2000s that the regime aggressively tried to cover up. Over the years, the news outlet has continued to focus on human rights abuses and other issues Beijing deems sensitive, including the persecution and forced organ harvesting of practitioners of the faith group, Falun Gong.
The late 2016 distributed denial-of-service attack cited in court documents is but one of many that The Epoch Times has experienced.
Twice last year, The Epoch Times identified mass cyberattacks that overwhelmed its website.
The publication has noted a long list of sabotage efforts undertaken by the regime, including its agents threatening and demanding Epoch Times’ business partners and advertisers to drop their advertisements from the newspaper. Chinese security officers have harassed the family members of The Epoch Times’ top executives in China, and Chinese consular officials in the United States have attempted to interfere with the publication’s news gathering efforts.
In one incident, Chinese diplomats repeatedly tried to bar an Epoch Times reporter from U.S.-based events featuring the visiting Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. They tried to get Massachusetts officials to deny his media credential, and when the U.S. side declined, pressed them to cancel the event altogether. According to one U.S. official at the scene, the Chinese authorities threatened to cancel Wen’s trip if the Epoch Times reporter was let into the event and Chinese representatives twice tried to physically block the reporter at the entrance.
Court documents show that Chinese diplomats have discouraged a naturalized U.S. citizen from taking part in interviews from The Epoch Times’ sister outlet, NTD. The printing factory in Hong Kong over the years has faced a series of attacks from individuals believed to be connected with the Chinese regime. In one incident, assailants broke in and set the printing equipment on fire.
Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), upon learning about Beijing’s targeted hacking operation, called it “crazy” and “unbelievable.”
“I don’t put anything past them,” she told The Epoch Times, a day after the DOJ announced the indictments. “They are nefarious, and they’re pretty blatant in what they do.”
The Epoch Times remains inaccessible in China without an internet circumvential tool. The earliest China-based reporters for The Epoch Times were arrested in China. Two received 10 years in prison.
To the Chinese regime, anything the outlet does is notable “because they want to sabotage pretty much everything,” Zhou said. “They want to get every kind of information that they can get so they can compromise our operation.”
He thanked the publication’s readers for their trust.
He added that they should have little to worry since The Epoch Times doesn’t store sensitive customer information, such as credit card numbers, in its systems.
“Our readers’ trust means everything to us, and we are committed to keeping our readers’ information secure.”
Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.