Cyberthieves prowl across China

CHANGSHA, China — With a few quick key strokes, a computer hacker who goes by the code name Majia calls up a screen displaying his latest victims.

“Here's a list of the people who've been infected with my Trojan horse,” he said, working from a dingy apartment on the outskirts of this city in central China. “They don't even know what's happened.”

As he explained it, an online “trap door” he created recently has already lured 2,000 people from China and overseas — people who clicked on something they should not have, inadvertently spreading a virus that allows him to take control of their computers and steal bank account passwords.

Majia, a soft-spoken college graduate in his early 20s, is a cyberthief.

He operates secretly and illegally, as part of a community of hackers who exploit flaws in computer software to break into Web sites, steal valuable data and sell it for a profit.

Internet security experts say that China has legions of hackers just like Majia and that they are behind an escalating number of global attacks to steal credit card numbers, commit corporate espionage and even wage cyber-warfare on other nations, which in some cases have been traced back to China.

Two weeks ago, Google blamed hackers that it connected to China for a series of sophisticated cyber-attacks that led to the theft of the company's valuable source code. Google also said hackers infiltrated the private Gmail accounts of human rights activists, suggesting the effort might have been more than just mischief.

In addition to independent cybercriminals like Majia, computer security specialists say there are so-called “patriotic hackers” who focus their attacks on political targets. Then there are the intelligence-oriented hackers inside the People's Liberation Army, as well as more shadowy groups that are believed to work with the state government.

Indeed, in China — as in parts of Eastern Europe and Russia — computer hacking has become something of a national sport, and a lucrative one. There are hacker conferences, hacker training academies and magazines with titles like “Hacker X Files” and “Hacker Defense,” which offer tips on how to break into computers or build a Trojan horse, step by step.

For less than $6, one can even purchase the “Hacker's Penetration Manual.” (Books on hacking are also sold, to a lesser extent, in the United States and elsewhere.)

And with 380 million Web users in China and a sizzling hot online gaming market, analysts say it is no wonder Chinese youths are so skilled at hacking.

Many Chinese hackers interviewed over the past few weeks describe a loosely defined community of computer nerds working independently, but also selling services out to corporations, and even the military.

Because it is difficult to trace hackers, exactly who is behind any specific attack and how and where they operate remains to a large extent a mystery, technology experts say.

Computer hacking is illegal in China.

Last year, Beijing revised and stiffened a law that makes hacking into computers a crime, with punishments of up to seven years in prison.

Majia seems to disregard the law, largely because it is not strictly enforced. But he does take care to cover his tracks.

Partly, he admitted, the lure is money. Many hackers make a lot of money, he said, and he seems to be plotting his own path. Exactly how much he has earned, he won't say.

But he does admit to selling malicious code to others; and boasts of being able to tap into people's bank accounts by remotely operating their computers.

Indeed, financial incentives motivate many young Chinese hackers like Majia, computer experts say.

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