A U.S. judge on Wednesday sentenced a Chinese national to 46 months in prison for conspiring to hack into the computers of major American defense contractors and smuggling the information to China.
Su Bin pleaded guilty of conspiring with two unnamed hackers in China to export U.S. military information to the communist nation from October 2008 to March 2014.
“Su assisted the Chinese military hackers in their efforts to illegally access and steal designs for cutting-edge military aircraft that are indispensable to our national defense," said John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security.
Su told his co-conspirators — military officers in China — whom to target, which files to steal and why the information they stole was significant.
Court records say the men targeted fighter jets such as the F-22 and the F-35, as well as Boeing's C-17 military cargo aircraft program.
Su was arrested in Canada in 2014 and brought to the U.S. He had faced 30 years in prison before reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors in March.
