China closes training ground for cybercriminals

by Steve Ragan - Feb 8 2010, 16:40

Police have closed a known training website in Central China's Hubei province, which was used to teach an astounding number of would-be hackers how to use Malware and other techniques to pillage the masses online. The site, Black Hawk Safety Net (3800cc.com), was established in 2005 and counted more than 182,000 people as students.

According to an interview given to China Daily, a 23-year-old member of Black Hawk Safety Net, located in Nanjing of East China's Jiangsu province, said that it was easy to perform simple criminal tasks.

"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.”

In addition to the China Daily reports, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported that more than 50 police officers were investigating the Black Hawk Safety Net case, which resulted in $249,000 USD in frozen assets and the arrests of three people. Police also seized nine webservers, five computers, and one car, in addition to closing the 3800cc.com domain.

The training site at its peak had more 12,000 VIP members and at least 170,000 free members. According to the police, the site collected more than 7 million Yuan in fees during its operation.

The arrests were part of a crackdown enforcing a new law in China that makes it illegal to distribute “hacking” software, such as Malware kits, Xinhua reported. In 2009, a report published by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China said that the hacking industry in China caused 7.6 billion Yuan, roughly $1.11 billion USD, in losses.

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