Game firm raided over cyber attacks

Police have arrested the head of purported online gaming company for orchestrating cyber attacks against its competitors since 2012, which in one case cost its victim an estimated 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) in lost business, local media reported Monday.

The suspect, surnamed Tu, was arrested with three others involved in the attacks, which aimed to disrupt competitors' servers and prevent users from playing their games, according to a report in the Xinmin Evening News.

Xuhui district police suspect that Tu's company, which was not identified, only operated under the guise of an online gaming company, the report said. In reality, the enterprise engaged in several of illegal online activities, such as spamming advertisements, hosting erotic chat services and organizing cyber attacks.

Tu's enterprise specialized in the cyber attacks. Specifically, police accused the enterprise of launching a distributed denial of service (DDoS) against other online gaming companies.

Earlier this year, an unidentified gaming company reported to police that its website had been under attack since January, causing many of its users to complain that they were unable to log in.

DDoS attacks seek to overwhelm the target, such as website or game server, with so many requests for service that the target can no longer communicate with its intended users.

Online game subscribers, for example, can no longer log into their game's servers to play when the servers have been targeted in a successful DDoS attack.

Typically, hackers employ an army of zombie computers for a DDoS attack, said Qian Bonian, an expert in computer technology.

Police said Tu contacted an agent surnamed Wu who hired a group of hackers from Zhengzhou, Henan Province, to launch the attacks. Many of the computers that the hackers coopted for the attack were servers for school, corporate and government websites that hadn't been properly maintained.

The target gaming company found that its website had been deluged with invalid traffic consistent with a DDoS attack. The company's staff spent several days trying to solve the problem before notifying police. It reported losing many of its 13.5 million registered users.

Tu not only hired hackers from outside the company, but also organized attacks with his own in-house staff, said a press officer surnamed Tao with the Xuhui District Public Security Bureau.

Tu even trained his cousin to be a hacker with the intention of turning his company into a hacker training base, the report said.