A U.S. court has sentenced a Chinese man to 46 months in prison after he admitted stealing sensitive military information.
Su Bin, 51, admitted he was one of several Chinese operatives who for years hacked into the systems of major U.S. defense contractors to obtain data.
Su, a China-based businessman, worked alongside military officers from the People's Liberation Army Air Force. During his sentencing Wednesday, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin said that Su had helped "steal designs for cutting-edge military aircraft that are indispensable to our national defense," the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
From 2008 to 2014, the businessman also told the officers which companies to target, what files to steal and identified whether the hacked information was important. He also helped translate some of the files into Chinese.
Su was arrested for his role in the scheme in Canada in July 2014. In February this year, he agreed that authorities could extradite him to the U.S., where he pleaded guilty a month later. In addition to his prison sentence, Su has to pay a $10,000 fine.
Despite his arrest, the Chinese government continues to deny that it authorizes the hacking of foreign entities, the BBC reported.
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