Biggest Hacker Training Site Shut Down in Chaina: 3 People Arrested

Biggest hacker training site (Black Hawk Safety Net) closed by Chinese authorities. Police arrested three people who ran the Web site and charged 100 to 200 yuan ($14 to $29) for lessons.

The “Black Hawk Safety Net” website taught hacking techniques and provided malicious software downloads for its 12,000 members in exchange for a fee. Officials in Hubei province said the hacking site was the largest in the country. The site established in 2005. The site had recruited more than 12,000 paid and 170,000 free members. They charged 100 to 200 Yuan ($14 to $29) for lessons and all together collected more than 7 million Yuan ($1.02 million) in membership fees. Police said more than 50 officers had been investigating the case. They seized nine web servers, five computers and one car, and shut down all the sites involved in the case, according to the provincial public security department.

The popularity of hacking in China, and hackers’ use of multiple addresses and servers, in Taiwan and elsewhere, makes it hard to prove how or by whom they are co-ordinate. China says hackers caused 7.6 billion Yuan ($1.02 billion) in losses in the country last year.

“I could download Trojan programs from the site which allowed me to control other people’s computers. I did this just for fun but I also know that many other members could make a fortune by attacking other people’s accounts. It is not very difficult to do simple hacker tasks. Some hacker members are teenagers who dropped out of school and make money by stealing accounts,” said a 23-year-old member of Black Hawk Safety Net in Nanjing of East China’s Jiangsu province.

Online search giant Google threw global attention on hacking in China last month, when it cited cyber attacks from China as one reason it may stop censoring search results on its China based search engine, even if that means leaving the country altogether. Foreign correspondents in at least two Chinese bureaus of news organizations had their Google e-mail accounts attacked, with e-mails forwarded to a mysterious address, according to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China. China has denied any government role in the attacks and said the country’s laws ban hacking crimes.

Biggest Hacker Training Site Shut Down in Chaina: 3 People Arrested

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