China has stepped up efforts to hunt down cybercriminals hiding overseas in response to the tendency of cybercrime gangs moving their dens and operations abroad, the Ministry of Public Security said Thursday.
Chinese police detained 49 cybercrime suspects from their overseas hideouts in a 10-month campaign to clean up the online environment last year, said Wang Yingwei, a senior official with the ministry's cybersecurity division, at a press conference.
The highlights of the operation were the capture of the principal members of a hacking ring, which had conducted aggressive cyberattacks for seven years, as well as the crackdown on a pornographic live-streaming platform with more than 2.8 million members, Wang said.
Police also repatriated a number of suspects who allegedly organized online gambling.
