In 2017, the Justice Department announced the indictment of three Chinese hackers in the group Symantec calls Buckeye. While prosecutors did not assert that the three were working on behalf of the Chinese government, independent researchers and the classified N.S.A. Symantec discovered that as early as March 2016, the Chinese hackers were using tweaked versions of two N.S.A. The Chinese appear not to have turned the weapons back against the United States, for two possible reasons, Symantec researchers said. They might assume Americans have developed defenses against their own weapons, and they might not want to reveal to the United States that they had stolen American tools.

Source: New York Times May 06, 2019 23:37 UTC