China Arrested Suspected OPM Hackers Three Months Ago

In a surprise twist, the Washington Post reports that the Chinese government has arrested the suspected hackers behind the massive Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breach.

Previously, the paper had reported the September arrests of a handful of hackers who allegedly stole data from US companies. Those hackers, it turns out, were picked up by the Chinese government in connection with the OPM hack, which resulted in the personal details of at least 32 million United States federal employees being stolen.

The arrests reportedly took place shortly before a US visit from China's President Xi Jinping, where he pledged to do more to fight cybercrime.

"The Chinese government will not in whatever form engage in commercial theft, and hacking against government networks are crimes that must be punished in accordance with the law and relevant international treaties," Xi Jinping said then, according to the New York Times.

This news comes on the heels of another bombshell in the recently revived OPM story. On Wednesday, China's state-run media outlet Xinhua claimed that an "investigation" had revealed that the hack was "a criminal case rather than a state-sponsored cyber attack as the US side has previously suspected."

It's important to note that it remains unclear whether those arrested really were linked to the OPM hack. An anonymous official told the Post that "we don't know that if the arrests the Chinese purported to have made are the guilty parties."

Samuel Schumach, press secretary for the Office of Personnel Management, deferred Motherboard to the FBI when asked for comment. An FBI spokesperson told Motherboard in an email, "We don't have anything for you on this."

Chinese media have also been reporting on the arrests of several hackers, but has not directly named any of the accused. Some reports remain suspicious in terms of who is in fact behind the hack, but Chinese state media has dismissed as baseless the reports that the Chinese government was the main perpetrator.

As of this September, the Chinese government had arrested nearly 15,000 hackers accused of cybercrimes. This is part of the country's "Operation Clean Internet" campaign, a promised crackdown to the alleged cyber outlaw activities.

Some have been sceptical about the increasingly close relationship between the US and China when it comes to cybersecurity. Last month, US counterintelligence chief Bill Evanina told a briefing that he had seen no indication that "anything has changed" around China's digital espionage efforts on the United States.

But if the suspected hackers of one of the most significant data breaches of all time have supposedly been arrested, that would be a promising signal of things to come.