back to article Good: US boasts it collared two in Chinese hacking bust. Bad: They aren't the actual hackers, rest are safe in China

Two people have been arrested in Malaysia as part of America's crackdown on the Chinese government's hackers. The two men, both Malaysian nationals, are not accused of breaking into computer networks. Rather, it is claimed, they operated the storefronts where hacked goods were peddled. Specifically, it is alleged they ran …

  1. martinusher Silver badge

    Bogeyman du jour

    Its apparently the rule these days that anything involving China should a) be negative in tone and b) mention the "Chinese Communist Party" prominently. There's been numerous examples of cooperation between police in the US and China in the past but now everything is political. Maybe this is part of the plan, part of the process of isolating their society so our own versions of MinTruth can frame their version of the world picture accurately.

    Common sense would suggest that state actors most definitely don't work through a 'storefront for hacked data' in Malaysia.

    Incidentally, Sweden has just given up a Chinese citizen (Quiao Juanjun), a former government official accused of money laundering, visa fraud and the like. The Swedes had refused an extradition request from the Chinese because of "fears of political persecution" but I'd guess that because the money was obtained from corrupt practice political persecution would be the least of his worries.

    1. JCitizen
      FAIL

      Re: Bogeyman du jour

      All I know as far as my personal experience, is that the Chinese were trying to ruin the lives of several of my clients that had IP to protect - These folks(victims) were ultra smart, but didn't know anything about computer and/or phone security, and they got run over like a truck. It took a while to ID who these bad actors were, and even though they were so arrogant they left notes on the computers of the organization's network assets so they could track their ingress; we still waited to see who we thought really did these egregious operations. It turns out in the early times of these crimes, the IP addresses were easier to track, and they always pointed to several addresses in China. This was in early 2005.

      Later they got smart and obfuscated where their attacks were coming from by routing through so many compromised networks you would take forever finding out where the true end point was. Common sense tells me it was the same teams that were originally attacking my clients. In this process they realized who was helping the victims and tried to penetrate my network, but I had a very good CheckPoint UTM appliance that not only prevented this, but also tracked where the attacks were coming from, and you guessed it. Same IP addresses we saw before.

      Eventually I had to give up on these poor people and one of them was ruined, and is living in poverty now with relatives, and one other was so late jumping off into marketing their ideas, that I'm not sure how they are doing now - although their web site is still up. I wasn't totally untouched however, because the criminals managed to hack into the local ISP who was my phone provider and block all external calls into my business. That took me a while to find out also, because I had to learn face to face, from other witnesses that said people couldn't call me, even though I never heard the phone ring - so I contacted the ISP and asked them to flush all routers and switches and re-image them from backup - and - you guessed it - that worked! The ISP was flabbergasted, but that is just how long a reach these deep state bad actors have on the whole world. I have nothing but contempt for all of them, and not just the Chinese.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "resold character equipment and in-game currency stolen by miscreants from online video game players."

    No wonder advanced lifeforms have no desire to make contact.

  3. Claverhouse
    Black Helicopters

    I Weaponed Up *Good* In Castle Of The Winds

    Wong Ong Hua, 46, and Ling Yang Ching, 32, face 23 criminal counts in the US, including racketeering, conspiracy, identity theft, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, money laundering, violations of the computer fraud and abuse act, and falsely registering domain names.

    .

    After a while it just looks like they scan their list of laws and throw darts.

    On the other hand, stealing virtual game goods --- no matter the worth to sad gamers --- seems the ultimate in triviality for courts to judge.

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  6. mhenriday
    Boffin

    This is the only way to neutralize malicious nation state cyber activity.
    Any evidence to connect this rather routine hacking operation to a «nation state», «malicious» or otherwise ? All in the interest of «stifling freedom» (hyperbole seems to be alive and well in the US (In)Justice Department)....

    Henri

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