The US has charged four Chinese military officers over the cyber-attack of credit score giant Equifax.
More than 147 million Americans were affected in 2017 when the alleged hackers, who are members of the Chinese Liberation Army (PLA), stole personal data including names and addresses.
Some UK and Canadian customers were also affected.
“This was one of the largest data breaches in history,” said Attorney General William Barr.
Equifax said hackers accessed the information between mid-May and the end of July 2017 when the company discovered the breach.
The credit rating firm holds data on more than 820 million consumers as well as information on 91 million businesses.
In a statement Mr Barr said: “This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people.
“Today we hold PLA hackers accountable for their criminal actions, and we remind the Chinese government that we have the capability to remove the internet’s cloak of anonymity and find the hackers that nation repeatedly deploys against us.”
