ACCORDING to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a Chinese national posed as a U.S. researcher as part of a spear-phishing campaign to obtain sensitive information from NASA, other government entities, universities and private companies in violation of export control laws.
For years, NASA employees and research collaborators believed they were sharing software with colleagues, when in fact they were emailing sensitive defense technology to the imposter. The individual linked to the campaign was outed as Song Wu in September 2024, when the U.S. Department of Justice announced charges relating to a multi-year operation that stretched from January 2017 to December 2021.
The indictment states Song Wu and co-conspirators masqueraded as friends and colleagues to gain access to modelling software and source code used for aerospace design and weapons development, with victims including NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Song Wu has been indicted on counts of wire fraud and 14 counts of aggravated identity theft, facing a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each wire fraud count, plus a two-year consecutive sentence if convicted of aggravated identity theft, and he remains at large. The FBI has added Song to the U.S. Most Wanted List, noting the software could be used for industrial and military applications.