China boasts of computer hacking bust

Image by gutter via Flickr

China announced Monday that they’d cracked an alleged hacking ring with some 12,000 subscribers. The site taught people how to launch cyber attacks and supplied malware

But the arrests were reportedly made back in November. Why brag about it now?

Since last month’s Google-China smackdown, China’s goverment has been busy polishing its image as a responsible cyber-citizen. Now, in what looks to be a refutation of Google’s claims, they’ve gone public with a high-profile hacking case.

My bet is that this is PR, not substantive progress, but we’ll see how tings unfold.

Here is the latest, via WSJ:

Three people were arrested on suspicion of making hacking tools available online, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. Their business, known as Black Hawk Safety Net, operated through the now-shuttered website www.3800cc.com and generated around $1 million in income from its over 12,000 subscribers, the report said.

The arrests took place in late November as part of a police investigation that spanned three Chinese provinces and resulted in part from Black Hawk’s role in domestic hacker attacks, according to Xinhua.

The delay in announcing the case wasn’t explained. But China in recent weeks has waged an aggressive public relations campaign on the issue of hacking, apparently at least in part aimed at discrediting allegations from Google Inc. last month that China was the source of sophisticated cyberattacks against the Internet search giant and numerous other foreign companies. After U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also raised concerns about hacking from China, for instance, Chinese state media said her comments were hypocritical and said Google had become a pawn in an American “ideology war.”

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