The pitch was tantalizing: Just a little training and you too could
hack Web sites, earning thrills, power and, in many cases, money.
“Guaranteed successful attack tools!” is how Black
Hawk Safety Net advertised its online academy for hackers. “Spare one
minute to learn and you’ll make your life more exciting.”
Police in
province announced to the Chinese media over the weekend that they had
closed down the operation, which state media said was the largest
training site for Chinese hackers, and arrested three of its
ringleaders. Black Hawk is accused of collecting more than
Police actually shut down the network in November, two months before
To some, the announcement now suggests that the Chinese government could be getting more serious about cracking down.
“In legal terms, these hacking crimes are completely
new and only recently have prosecutors understood how dangerous they
are,” said Li Xuxi, a
But critics say the arrests might be little more than a propaganda ploy in the midst of the
“It seems aimed at bolstering the Foreign Ministry’s claim that
If
is going to get serious about hacking, prosecutors have their work cut
out for them. On the Web, in magazines and on occasional bus stop ads,
Internet users are beckoned with invitations to become heike, or “black
visitor,” the Chinese term for hacker.
Even the names — “EvilOctal” and “Dark Security Team” — make unvarnished appeals to the criminal side.
“Most of the members are really young, still
students, and they are drawn by the mystique of being a hacker,” said a
well-known Chinese hacker who goes by the name
“
Some hacker networks say they provide a service by
hacking into Web sites and then selling their services to bolster
security for those same sites.
But other groups teach how to break into financial accounts to steal money or how to disable Web sites of competitors.
Some claim their motives are purely political.
“We are the real patriotic youth. We’ll target anti-
websites across the nation and send it as a birthday gift to our
country,” boasted a Web site called 2009.90, which, when opened, showed
an image of a fluttering Chinese flag.
One of the difficulties in cracking down on hackers
is their level of acceptance in society. Top Chinese hackers hold a
yearly conference in
Moreover, some cyber warfare experts have accused
the Chinese government of sponsoring sophisticated attacks, such as
those against rights groups and political adversaries like the Dalai
Lama,
Black Hawk and other academies, says Mulvenon, have not been implicated in the major attacks.
“These academies like Black Hawk are primarily
moneymaking ventures, like self-help schools for people who want to
better themselves,” Mulvenon said.
The Black Hawk site started up in 2005 in Xuchang, a
It came to the attention of authorities in 2007 when an Internet cafe
owner complained that his Internet service stopped working and that
somebody was demanding more than
Eventually, police arrested the perpetrators and
traced the attack back to Black Hawk. Offices rented by the company
were raided in late November. Two of the founders of Black Hawk were
arrested in December and a third man in January, according to the
official Chinese media.
Although Black Hawk’s original Web site was taken
down, it appears that a new one has been set up under a different
address. And members say they don’t believe the bust will make a dent
in
“I’m not worried about Black Hawk being taken down
at all,” Zhang Quanhua, a 46-year-old Web site designer, said in an
e-mail interview. He said he was using the site to brush up his
computer skills.
“There are tons of similar forums just like Black
Hawk. Any forums that broke the law will be taken down, but they’ll be
OK as long as they are not hacking for profit.”
—
(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.
Visit the Los Angeles Times on the Internet at http://www.latimes.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
