Chinese Engineer Sought Over Fake Emails Targeting NASA, Military
FBI seeks Song Wu, an AVIC engineer charged with wire fraud and identity theft for allegedly using fake email accounts from 2017–2021 to obtain NASA and military software.
Federal agents are seeking Song Wu, an engineer employed by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), who is charged with 14 counts of wire fraud and 14 counts of aggravated identity theft. He has been on the FBI’s wanted list since September 2024.
Federal investigators allege Wu created multiple email accounts that impersonated U.S. researchers and engineers from January 2017 through December 2021. The impersonations targeted colleagues, collaborators and faculty to request source code and proprietary software.
The campaign targeted employees at NASA, the Air Force, Navy, Army and the Federal Aviation Administration, along with faculty at several U.S. universities. Investigators say the requests focused on programs used for aerospace engineering and computational fluid dynamics, subject to U.S. export controls.
The NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported some recipients provided the requested code or software. The OIG said those transfers could have violated export control laws “unwittingly,” because the recipients did not know they were sending controlled technical data to a foreign national or entity.
The investigation began after a tip to NASA’s Cyber Crimes Division about a Gmail account impersonating an aerospace professor who often worked with the agency. That message led investigators to dozens of similar emails and to the broader impersonation effort, the OIG wrote. The report identified red flags that were not always recognized, including repeated requests for the same material and a lack of explanation for why the software was needed.
AVIC is a Beijing-headquartered state-owned aerospace and defense conglomerate with more than 400,000 employees. The company and several subsidiaries are listed on U.S. sanctions lists. The criminal complaint alleges Wu used his position at AVIC while operating the impersonation campaign.
The OIG and law enforcement officials noted the campaign relied on social engineering rather than malware. Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray warned to a House committee in 2024 that “the PRC has a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined.”
The OIG cautioned that impersonation techniques are becoming harder to detect as attackers adopt tools such as voice cloning and synthetic media. Federal officials have warned that generative artificial intelligence could enable attackers to scale personalized impersonation across many targets.
The FBI has not publicly reported whether any recovered transfers of controlled software produced specific national security consequences. The charges against Wu allege deception and identity theft tied to obtaining protected information. Federal agencies and universities have been advised to strengthen verification procedures for requests involving controlled software and to raise researcher awareness of the legal and security risks of sharing technical material.
The investigation into Song Wu remains active while he is sought by U.S. authorities.
