The DOJ indicted Chinese hackers over a broad cyber attack campaign that targeted The Epoch Times as well as the U.S. government and civil groups.
NEW YORK—The Epoch Times has vowed to double down after learning the publication has been the target of a cyber attack campaign by Chinese state hackers.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) last week charged 12 Chinese state-linked hackers and law enforcement officers in widespread attacks that targeted The Epoch Times as well as U.S. government systems and civil groups.
Under the direction of two officers with the Ministry of Public Security—who have both been charged by U.S. authorities—the hackers had launched attacks that temporarily shut down The Epoch Times’ website, according to the DOJ.
They also stole emails from the publication’s chief editor and vice president and identified IP addresses from China that had accessed The Epoch Times’ website in an effort to find out where dissidents were located, authorities said.
Samuel Zhou, senior vice president of The Epoch Times, said he wasn’t surprised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) targeted the publication.
“This is the media outlet most feared by the CCP, and consequently it has been subject to its aggressive and relentless campaign to take us down,” Zhou said.
He said the CCP’s sabotage efforts will not deter The Epoch Times.
“We will not back down,” he said. “[We will] continue with our mission to expose their human rights abuses and also their campaigns to sabotage Western society.”
Zhou said the Chinese regime believes “the American way of life is a threat to its authoritarian ruling, and they want to sabotage and change it.”
He noted the regime’s ongoing influence campaign to silence dissidents in the United States.
“We will expose those things as a media to fulfill our responsibility to society and to promote press freedom,” Zhou said.
Founded in 2000 in Atlanta by Chinese dissidents who wanted to provide uncensored news about China, The Epoch Times was among the first to report on the deadly SARS pandemic in the early 2000s that the regime aggressively tried to cover up. Over the years, the news outlet has continued to focus on human rights abuses and other issues Beijing deems sensitive, including the persecution and forced organ harvesting of practitioners of the faith group, Falun Gong.
By Eva Fu
