FOR four years, a Chinese aerospace engineer used fake email accounts to spoof researchers and request source code and proprietary software from dozens of NASA, US military, and university staff, with the operation running from January 2017 through December 2021. The targeted applications concern aerospace engineering and computational fluid dynamics, and authorities say such software sits inside US export controls, according to NASA’s Office of the Inspector General.
The engineer, Song Wu, worked for the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) and has been on the FBI’s wanted list since September 2024, charged with 14 counts of wire fraud and 14 counts of aggravated identity theft, and he remains at large. The US sanctions list includes AVIC and several subsidiaries, reflecting the broader context of the case.
Investigators traced the campaign to a single Gmail thread that described the same software requests multiple times, a telltale sign that helped authorities unwind the operation.