A Chinese state media on Monday reported that Central China Police Department has shut down the operation of a hacker training facility, which reportedly recruited thousands of members via Internet and train them with the use of malicious software and other techniques used in a typical cyberattack.
The move was part of the intensified crack down campaign by the Chinese government following the recent attacks to the Gmail accounts of human-rights activists protesting against the “abusive” practices of the authorities in China.
It will be recalled that Google Inc threatened to pull out of China if the government failed to address the growing number of Internet crimes originating from the country.
At least three persons were arrested during the police operation. The suspects were identified as the administrators of the hacker website called the Black Hawk Safety Net, which is one of the leading disseminator of malwares and hacking techniques.
Hubei Province Police said that Black Hawk has already recruited more than 13, 000 members and has generated more than $1 million worth of subscription in just months of operations. There are also more than 170, 000 non-paying members.
Authorities were also able to recover at least nine servers, five super computers, and a car used by the suspects in transferring valuable data from their base to their prospected buyers. Following the raid, authorities have already frozen the assets of the website worth more than $250, 000.
Asked for comment, the Hubei officials declined to elaborate the arrest while provincial authorities were out of reach for details.
Earlier, online search giant Google threatened to remove censorship in its search results in China if the government failed to tone down its own “Green Dam” program also known as “The Great Firewall of China”.
But China has stayed with its online censorship program, stressing that they have no involvement with the cyberattacks. Reports told that Chinese hackers were able to penetrate at least 42, 000 computers last year.
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