Word: tannings
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...Tan Dailin lets out an audible gasp when he is told that he was identified in the U.S. as someone who may have been responsible for recent security breaches at the Pentagon. "Will the FBI send special agents out to arrest me?" he asks. Much as they might want to talk with him, though, FBI agents don't have jurisdiction in Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province, where Tan lives. And given that he has been lauded in China's official press for his triumphs in military-sponsored hacking competitions, Tan is unlikely to have problems with local...
...Tan and his fellow hackers may be lying low for now. But the controversy over the activities of hundreds of Chinese like them will only continue to grow. Though the evidence remains mostly circumstantial, a picture is emerging of a coordinated effort by Chinese-military authorities to recruit hackers such as Tan and his group to winkle out information from computer systems outside China and launch cyberattacks in future conflicts...
...scale and sophistication of the activities apparently conducted by Tan and his group--and their alleged ties to the People's Liberation Army (PLA)--are an insight into China's effort to establish a corps of civilian cyberwarriors. A recent series of intrusions into the systems of Western governments and major corporations was blamed on China (though none of the intrusions have been specifically tied to Tan and his group). This month British media reported that the country's top antiespionage official had sent a letter to 300 major corporations warning that they faced attacks from "Chinese state organizations...
Gathered around the table at a restaurant in Chengdu on a recent evening, Tan, a.k.a. Withered Rose, and seven other members of the NCPH workshop don't look as though they could bring the U.S. economy to a halt. All in their early 20s, rail thin and with the prison pallor acquired from long nights spent hunched over monitors, they look like what they are: a bunch of nerds. They refuse to give their real names, referring to one another by nicknames--Blacksmith, Firestarter, Fisherman, Floorsweeper, Chef, Plumber, Pharmacist. All vehemently deny having anything to do with attacks...
...what does the NCPH, which Tan founded in 2004 when he was a student at Sichuan University of Science and Engineering, actually do? The answer starts out vague, but eventually pride gets the better of the young men. They acknowledge that the group first got its reputation by hacking 40% of the hacker associations' websites in China. That was during their "young and hotheaded college days," as Fisherman puts it. The NCPH is also famous for the remote-network-control programs they wrote and offered for download. These programs, which allow hackers to take over other computers, are exactly...