How China’s Patriotic ‘Honkers’ Became the Nation’s Elite Cyberspies
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Summary
The “Honkers” are a group of Chinese youths that formed groups in the 1990s such as the Green Army and Evil Octal to launch patriotic cyberattacks, mainly website defacements and denial of service operations against the US, Taiwan and Japan.
Threat intelligence firm Verisign iDefense reported that the monthly salary of the Chinese hackers was around 250,whichincreasedto1,000 a month after a summer hacking spree in 2006.
Former FBI analyst, Adam Kozy, who now heads SinaCyber consulting firm believes the hackers were working with the Chinese government and were paid to launch unprecedented attacks on US companies and government entities.
A report from the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zürich university in Switzerland found that former Honkers have gone on to become contractors for the PLA and MSS working on operations conducted by APT 41, 17 and 27.
US government systems, health care organizations and telecoms have all been targetted by the group.
