FBI Tackles Chinese Hackers Targeting NASA And Federal Agencies

US authorities say they have stopped a hacking ring linked to China that went after sensitive American government bodies for years. The Justice Department released its announcement on Wednesday. It details the takedown of two platforms known as QScan and QTRouter. These tools helped attackers infect internet-connected devices like routers while hiding where the strikes really came from.

Court documents say this infrastructure has been used to break into networks since at least 2018. Targets included NASA, the Federal Reserve, the US Senate, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Hackers tried to hit NASA in August 2019 but failed that time. In September 2024 they succeeded at three Department of Energy labs plus those health agencies and a maker of security gear. Four other companies in the US and South Korea were also listed as targets, though their names were not released.

The operation was run by Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company, a firm based in China. The Justice Department says its clients included China's Ministry of State Security and the People's Liberation Army. Neither the Chinese embassy in Washington nor Nanjing Xinjiuwei answered requests for comment from Reuters. QScan found thousands of vulnerable devices on the web. Then QTRouter pulled them into a hidden network that let attackers route attacks through machines outside China. That trick made an assault on a US target look like it came from another country or even from right next door to the victim.

Seizing those domains does not wipe out every operation by the group, but it knocks offline the specific platforms they relied on. Richard Hummel, vice president at SecurityScorecard, explained why that matters. "When an intrusion appears to come from a device down the street from the target instead of from overseas, it buys the operator time and makes attribution slow," he told Al Jazeera. "Taking two platforms of that size offline costs the operators real capability they were using every day."

The move fits into a wider set of court-authorized actions aimed at what Attorney General Todd Blanche called indiscriminate hacking sponsored by China. The FBI's Cyber Division, federal prosecutors in California, and the San Diego field office led the probe. These Chinese-linked campaigns have already compromised private networks and government systems across the US. In March the FBI told Congress that hackers had penetrated certain agency networks tied to people under investigation. Later public reports linked those intrusions to China. Other incidents involved committees in the House of Representatives and several major telecom firms over recent years. The information shared here comes from official filings and limited briefings, meaning the full scope of what happened remains restricted.