Chinese Police Bust Hacker-Training Business

Police in central China say they have shut down a hacker-training operation that openly recruited thousands of members online and provided them with cyberattack lessons and malicious software. Police in Hubei province arrested three people suspected of running the hacker site known as the Black Hawk Safety Net, which disseminated hacking techniques and Trojan software. The crackdown comes amid growing concern that China is a center for Internet crime and industrial espionage.

The site recruited more than 12,000 paying subscribers and collected more than $1 million in membership fees, while another 170,000 people had signed up for free membership, reports the China Daily. It's not clear if the case is related to the recent trouble with Google, which said last month its e-mail accounts were hacked from China. The assault hit at least 20 other companies. (More China stories.)