US Seeks Alleged Chinese Hafnium Hacker With $10 Million Reward
US offers $10M reward for info on alleged Chinese hacker Zhang Yu linked to Hafnium campaign.
The US Department of State is offering a $10 million reward for information on Zhang Yu, a Chinese national accused of participating in the Hafnium campaign against Microsoft Exchange servers. Zhang is alleged to have worked for the Shanghai State Security Bureau and targeted COVID-19 research and other sensitive data. He is charged alongside Xu Zewei, who was extradited from Italy to the US.
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The lesson from this incident
Full lessonThe Hafnium campaign exploited unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange servers, enabling state-sponsored Chinese actors to exfiltrate sensitive data including COVID-19 research. The root cause was organizations failing to apply available security patches in a timely manner, leaving internet-facing email infrastructure exposed to known exploits. This attack demonstrates that nation-state actors actively target high-value, unpatched systems at scale, often within days of vulnerability disclosure. The long-term impact — stolen sensitive research and intelligence — underscores that delayed patching in critical environments can have national security consequences.
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