A hacker who allegedly carried out cyberattacks on behalf of China has been extradited to the United States

A man accused of carrying out cyberattacks on behalf of the Chinese government has been extradited to the United States, and faces more than a decade in prison if convicted.

Last year, the US Department of Justice accused Xu Ziwei of acting as a contractor for the Chinese Ministry of State Security to carry out a series of cyber attacks. Prosecutors alleged that Xu and his partner Zhang Yu targeted several US universities in early 2020 to steal research related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The two also allegedly hacked thousands of email servers running Microsoft Exchange starting in March 2021, as part of a “random” campaign attributed to a Chinese-backed hacking group known as Hafnium, and later Silk Typhoon.

Shaw was arrested in Italy last year at the request of the American authorities. His lawyer in Italy, Simona Candido, told TechCrunch that Shaw was extradited to the United States on Saturday, and is now being detained in Houston, Texas.

According to the US Bureau of Prisons website, a man with the same name is being held at the Federal Detention Center in Houston.

After this story was published, the Justice Department announced Shaw’s extradition in a press release.

Dan Cogdill, Xu’s US attorney, told TechCrunch that Xu pleaded not guilty to all charges during Monday morning’s court hearing.

According to court records, Shaw made his first appearance in federal court and was remanded into custody.

As the Justice Department said when it initially announced the charges against the accused hackers, Xu allegedly worked for the Shanghai Powerock Network, a company in China that prosecutors said “hacked” for Beijing. Xu and other hackers allegedly reported their activities directly to Chinese state officials in Shanghai.

Along with Zhang, he was part of the Hafnium group that allegedly exploited previously undetected security flaws in Microsoft Exchange servers with the aim of hacking into several US organizations, including defense contractors, law firms, think tanks and infectious disease researchers.

According to prosecutors, Hafnium hackers targeted more than 60,000 entities in the United States and successfully compromised more than 12,700 of them.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment.

The Financial Times reported that China’s Foreign Ministry opposed Xu’s extradition and accused the US government of “fabricating cases.”

For years, the US government has brought charges against suspected Chinese hackers, many of whom remain at large. In 2022, Yanjun Xu was sentenced to 20 years in prison for hacking crimes, in what the Justice Department said was the first case in which a Chinese government intelligence officer was extradited to the United States.

This story has been updated to include the Justice Department’s announcement of Shaw’s extradition, information from new court records, and comments from Shaw’s attorney.