China closes "biggest hacker site," arrests three (Roundup)

Feb 8, 2010, 10:04 GMT

Beijing - Police have shut down China's biggest website for hackers and arrested three people suspected of selling malicious software and other hacking services, state media said Monday.

The police in the central province of Hubei arrested the three owners of Black Hawk Safety Net, a specialist hacking website that registered more than 170,000 free members, the China Daily and several provincial newspapers said.

The website also collected about 7 million yuan (1 million dollars) in fees from 12,000 VIP members, the reports said.

Since it was set up in 2005, the website had 'disseminated hacker techniques through lessons, Trojan software and online forum communications,' China Daily said.

About 50 officers had investigated the website since police linked several members to a virus attack in Hubei's Macheng city in 2007.

Some hackers who used the site had seized control of online accounts for their own entertainment while others reportedly hacked into bank accounts with the aim of stealing money.

'Basically, students were told how to steal accounts and use Trojan programs,' China Daily quoted one unnamed 20-year-old as saying of the website's training for hackers. 'Sometimes, trainers show us how to write programs.'

The reports did not say why the police had taken more than two years to arrest the organizers of the Black Hawk website, who were based in three provinces.

Hackers illegally earned 238 million yuan and caused estimated economic losses of 7.6 billion yuan for China's 380 million internet users last year, according to the government.

News of the latest arrests came amid a diplomatic spat between China and the United States after internet giant Google Inc said it was reviewing its operations in China following 'a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.'

In one of several hacking cases reported in recent months, police in north-eastern China in August arrested two men accused of stealing 362,000 dollars from bank accounts in South Korea.

Another four suspects were arrested in May after they caused local internet failures in six provinces while a hacker in Hubei was sentenced to 18 months in prison after he attacked a government website and replaced an official's photograph with one of a woman in a bikini.

A software engineer was also arrested after he created false tickets in a lottery database in a bid to claim 5 million dollars in prize money.

'Hackers' activities are now running wild because they have easy access to free online attack tools,' Li Xiaodong, deputy director of the state-run China Internet Network Information Centre, told the China Daily last year.

The newspaper quoted Li as saying China was 'in dire need of improved technology and better legal structure' to protect internet users against hackers.

But Chinese government experts claimed many global hacking attacks apparently originating in China were actually created by hackers in other nations who took advantage of China's weaker technology.

'Hackers often use computers based in China as their springboard,' the newspaper quoted Beijing-based internet expert Fang Xingdong as saying.