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Changsha, China. With a few quick keystrokes, a computer hacker going by the code name Majia calls up a screen displaying his victims.

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

As he explains it, an online “trapdoor” he created a week ago 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 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 online warfare on other nations.

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

In addition to independent criminals 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 names 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.”

And with 380 million Web users in China and a sizzling 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 devotees working independently but also selling services 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. And that is just the way Majia, the young Chinese hacker, wants it.

Majia says he fell in love with hacking in college. After earning a degree in engineering, he took a job with a government agency, largely to please his parents. But every night after work, he turns to his passion: hacking.

“Most hackers are lazy,” he says, seated in front of a computer in his spare bedroom, which overlooks a dilapidated apartment complex. “Only a few of us can actually write code. That’s the hard part.”

Computer hacking is illegal in China. Last year, Beijing revised and stiffened a law that makes hacking 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.

He admitted the lure was money. Many hackers make a lot of money, he said. Exactly how much he has earned, he will not say. But he admits to selling malicious code to others; and boasted of being able to tap into people’s bank accounts by remotely operating their computers.

Financial incentives motivate many young Chinese hackers like Majia, experts say.

Scott J. Henderson, author of “The Dark Visitor: Inside the World of Chinese Hackers,” said many had been seeking to profit from stealing data from big corporations, or teaching others how to hijack computers. “They make a lot of money selling viruses and Trojan horses to infect other people’s computers,” Henderson. “They also break into online gaming accounts, and sell the virtual characters. It’s big money.”

Asked why he did not work for a major Chinese technology company, he sneered at the suggestion, saying that it would restrain his freedom.

He even claims to know details of the Google attack. “That Trojan horse on Google was created by a foreign hacker,” he says, indicating that the virus was then altered in China. “A few weeks before Google was hijacked, there was a similar virus. If you opened a particular page on Google, you were infected.”

 

The New York Times