The Dark Visitor

Well, what to do about this?  As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with Chinese hackers but it is being widely reported in the PRC news.  Checked the western press to see if anyone had picked up on it but haven’t seen anything yet.

So…

New China News via Sina.com reports that in July of this year, Argentina President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner’s tax identification number was altered by a hacker.

On 22 September, an official from the Argentina Tax Department said President Fernandez de Kirchner’s tax Identification number had been altered by a network hacker, rendering her unable to report or pay taxes normally.

According to the report, the hacker broke into the Argentina Federal Tax Management Bureau on 26 July and altered the account number.  A bank account audit in August revealed the problem, at which time the Federal Tax Management Bureau was immediately notified.

An official from the tax services bureau said that it was quite possible this attack was carried out by an oponent of President de Kirchner’s in order to cause her trouble.  The report further stated that during last year’s election, President de Kirchner’s tax information was targeted over 200 times by hackers from all over the country.

And you thought we only did China…we are international baby!

Over at Honeyblog.org, Thorsten Holz has a great post detailing the underground economy of the Chinese web. It explains the different “professions” and how they interact with each other to produce income. I feel this is an extremely important part of the Chinese hacker network (even though the article isn’t confined to that) and is at least a partial explanation of how it fuels itself. The Underground Economy of the Chinese Web.