Weifang, Shandong

The Weifang Public Security Bureau has successfully closed a case involving a hacker attack that caused a city-wide network paralysis.

In July of 2008, the Weifang Public Security Bureau Cyber Police received a report from the China Network Communications Corporation stating that the Weifang metropolitan network was under continuous hacker attack and this had caused a two day network outage for the entire city. Since over 90% of the users in Weifang subscribe to China Network Communications, the network outage affected over 400,000 users to include businesses, local government, schools, and hospitals.

Police pursued three suspects over a 3,000 kilometer chase passing through Tianjin, Beijing, Qingdao, Jinan and Shouguang. When the suspects were arrested, the police recovered laptops and eight other pieces of equipment. Two of the suspects charged with the crime worked as supervisors for a competing company and they confessed to hiring a third individual to hack the Weifang Corporation. The hacker used a botnet of over 8,000 computers to attack the company.