Five alleged members of the APT41 threat group have been indicted by a federal grand jury, in two separate actions that were unsealed this week.

Meanwhile, the Department of Treasury also imposed sanctions on individuals and organizations associated with Iran-linked APT39.

APT41 (a.k.a. Barium, Winnti, Wicked Panda or Wicked Spider) is known for nation-state-backed cyber-espionage activity as well as financial cybercrime. The Department of Justice alleges that the group “facilitated the theft of source code, software code-signing certificates, customer-account data and valuable business information,” which in turn “facilitated other criminal schemes, including ransomware and cryptojacking.”

The five suspected perpetrators, all of whom are residents and nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), are charged with hacking more than 100 victim companies in the United States and abroad, including software-development companies, computer-hardware manufacturers, telecom providers, social-media companies, video-game companies, nonprofit organizations, universities, think tanks and foreign governments, as well as pro-democracy politicians and activists in Hong Kong.

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