The US government has sanctioned a Chinese cybersecurity firm and charged Guan Tianfeng, an employee, with “a conspiracy to hack indiscriminately into firewall devices worldwide in 2020.” Tianfeng, who goes by gbigmao, was at the center of a major hacking scandal. According to the US Treasury and Justice Department, he and his team wrote malware that exploited a vulnerability in Sophos firewall tech, or a “zero-day” exploit. While the hack was primarily to steal data, a statement by the Treasury Department claims that “serious injury or loss of human life” was also on the table. Targeting around 81,000 firewalls, Tianfeng and other hackers hit glaring vulnerabilities.