Accused Chinese State Hacker Extradited from Italy to US #cybersecurity #hafnium #hacking

A rare accountability win in nation-state cyber espionage — an accused Chinese hacker is now in US custody after extradition from Italy. Xu Zewei, 33, was extradited to the United States on Saturday and is in detention in Houston. The DOJ alleges he worked at the direction of China's Ministry of State Security, targeting American universities researching COVID-19 vaccines and treatments starting in February 2020. According to the indictment, Xu was also part of the Hafnium campaign — a mass exploitation of vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server that Microsoft attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored group. The DOJ says Hafnium targeted over 60,000 US entities and compromised more than 12,700. Xu was arrested at Milan's Malpensa airport in July 2025 and spent nearly ten months fighting extradition through Italian courts. Co-defendant Zhang Yu remains at large. China's Foreign Ministry has called the charges politically motivated. Sources: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-arrest-prolific-chinese-state-sponsored-contract-hacker https://therecord.media/chinese-hacker-italy-extradited https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/27/hacker-who-allegedly-carried-out-cyberattacks-for-china-is-extradited-to-u-s/ More on cybersecurity, privacy, scams, and homelab on Hake Hardware. New shorts every weekday.