Google notches victory in Chinese hacker fight
February 8, 2010 by Valerie HelmbreckPosted in: Information security, Special Report, cybercrime, e-commerce, online banking
How much pressure does it take to get Chinese officials to crack down on would-be cyber-criminals? Plenty, but there’s been modest movement recently with the shuttering of an alleged hacker training operation.
Police in central China have shut down the organization that openly recruited thousands of members online. The folks who ran the “Black Hawk Safety Net” provided its “students” with cyber-attack lessons and malicious software, Chinese state media said recently.
Officials say the training group schooled paying customers in Web site hacking techniques and Trojan software.
The shutdown comes as concern continues to mount that China is a center for industrial espionage and criminal behavior on the Web.
The situation got so bad recently, search giant Google threatened to abandon the country, ostensibly because of Chinese censorship. But the threatened pullout came after the software giant charged that Google e-mail accounts were hacked from China.
Google wasn’t the lone victim in that assault, which also hit at least 20 other companies. But it was by far the biggest player with the most muscle.
Seems that flexing that muscle had at least a small impact.
Nobody seems to know if the lawlessness surrounding China’s Web activities is the result of independent criminals or if there’s any state or military involvement in the schemes.
But for now, the hacker training operation — and its 12,000 paying subscribers, as well as its 170,000 free members — will have to find another home. Seems that officials seized five computers and a car, shut down all Web sites involved in the case and froze 1.7 million yuan ($250,000) in assets along with arresting three people.
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February 9th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
That seems like a great development.
And though it may “seem” like nobody knows if the PRC was involved in the hacking schemes,
in fact a lot of investigators seem sure of it.
In other words, the attacks are being taken as an APT – Advanced Persistent Threat – which is milspeak for
an attacker that is so sophisticated and well funded that it would seem to require state sponsorship.
-Manichattan Jr.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Wow, so you arrested 3 people, seized 5 computers, and one car. Only 2 billion more hackers and hacker websites to go!
February 9th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
No one seems to know if there’s military or State support/involvment? And there’s 12,000 paid members and 100,000 plus free members (or students)?
Gimmee a break! This isn’t an operation put together by Billy Bob (er, Zhou)! Way too sophisticated for a couple guys with computers in the back bedroom! Yep, Yep, Yep!
February 9th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Sophisticated??? Any 16 year old with the gumption to take some CEH and programming classes can learn to do this stuff. State sponsership??? How could a state sponsered operation be so easy to spot or mitigate? I think it is prudent to keep in mind, despite the differences between the US and China on many levels, that China is the United States’ #1 Creditor and would not benefit from the toppling of our business infrastructure. I would be very suprised indeed to find out this was state sponsered training.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Your title is what Chinese Gov really wants to see and wants it spread out to the world. Give me a break. This is a dirty game of communist gov that I know pretty well. It just wants to show to the world that hey, we are fighting it and it’s not allowed in our country. If anyone believes in it, think 1000 times again. Look at what this communist gov deals with IP, copyright stuff then you know what’s going on. Regarding hacking, well, without it, how this communist gov has achieved most of its advanced technologies in any kind of industries that it has involved. By its own R&D? ha ha ha, you’re so naive if you think it that way. By stealing other IP’s is the fastest and cheapest ones to do. Oh, I forgot, it’s easy to do as well. Look at how many western companies have been opening plants, offices in that country. Their IP and technologies have been stolen there.
February 10th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Every country govt practices hacking other countries if they have their act together, it is standard espionage training in this century, but I agree with Jason that it is not in China’s interest to randomly hack American companies, but certainly they have govt sponsorship for this kind of thing. the small time operation noted here seems to be outside of govt, but certainly govt may be outsourcing espionage as well, and a quarter of a million dollars isn’t chump change, so who knows?
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