NEW YORK CITY—The Epoch Times has vowed to double down after learning the publication has been the target of a cyberattack campaign by Chinese state hackers.
Under the direction of two officers from China’s 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. In an effort to find out where dissidents were located, they identified IP addresses from China that had accessed The Epoch Times’ website, authorities said.
Samuel Zhou, senior vice president of The Epoch Times, said he was not surprised that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has 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 reassured subscribers that The Epoch Times does not store sensitive customer information, such as credit card numbers, in its systems.
Zhou 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 that “the American way of life is a threat to its authoritarian rule,“ and that the regime wants ”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 ... to fulfill our responsibility to society and to promote press freedom,” Zhou said.
The distributed denial-of-service attack in late 2016 cited in court documents is but one of many that The Epoch Times has experienced.
The publication has noted a long list of sabotage efforts undertaken by the regime, including Chinese state agents threatening The Epoch Times’ business partners and advertisers and demanding that they remove their ads from the newspaper. Chinese security officers have harassed the family members of The Epoch Times’ top executives in China, and Chinese consular officials in the United States have attempted to interfere with the publication’s newsgathering efforts.
In one incident, Chinese diplomats repeatedly tried to bar an Epoch Times reporter from U.S.-based events featuring Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. The diplomats attempted to convince Massachusetts officials to deny the reporter’s media credentials, and when the U.S. side declined, they pressed them to cancel the event altogether. According to one U.S. official at the scene, the Chinese authorities threatened to cancel Wen’s trip if the Epoch Times reporter was let into the event, and Chinese representatives twice tried to physically block the reporter at the entrance.
Court documents show that Chinese diplomats discouraged a naturalized U.S. citizen from taking part in interviews with The Epoch Times’ sister outlet, NTD.
Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), upon learning about Beijing’s targeted hacking operation, called it “crazy” and “unbelievable.”
“I don’t put anything past them,” she told The Epoch Times a day after the DOJ announced the indictments. “They are nefarious, and they’re pretty blatant in what they do.”
The Epoch Times remains inaccessible in China without an internet circumvention tool. The first China-based reporters for The Epoch Times were arrested in China. Two received 10 years in prison.
Anything the outlet does is notable to the CCP because the Chinese regime wants “to sabotage pretty much everything,” according to Zhou.
“They want to get every kind of information that they can get so they can compromise our operation,” he said.
He thanked Epoch Times readers for their trust.
“Our readers’ trust means everything to us, and we are committed to keeping our readers’ information secure,” Zhou said.
Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.
