China clamps down "biggest hacker training base"

Thursday, 9 February 2012

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By Jianggan Li | 8 February 2010

Chinese authorities have closed down the ‘biggest hacker training base’ in the country.

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According to an announcement made last Saturday by the Public Security Department of Hubei Provincial Government, Black Eagle Security Portal (www.3800hk.com), had recruited 12,000 paying members and 170,000 other members during its five years of operations.

In April 2009, police of Macheng County in Hubei Province tracked down the sources of a series of network attacks which had paralysed the network of an entire district in the county. The arrested suspects told the police they had been exchanging techniques and sharing malware over the Black Eagle web site, which led to the discovery of the training base, which was disguised as an internet security company. After half a year of investigation and evidence gathering, the police shut down the web site last Saturday and arrested its owners.

According to the police, Black Eagle Security Portal had offered training in network attacks, online fraud, spread of computer viruses as well as data theft. In addition, the web site had provided more than 1000 malware for its paying members. Through these activities Black Eagle has made a profit of more than RMB 7 million (US$ 1.03 million) since it was set up in 2005.

The police said that the Seventh Amendment to the Criminal Law, which defined providing hacking tools as a criminal offence, has made police investigations much easier since its ratification in 2008.

China now is home to more than 300 million internet users and network attacks cost the economy more than RMB 7.9 billion (US$ 1.16 billion) in 2009, according to a recent report by China National Computer network Emergency Response technical Tem (CNCERT).