Fergie's Tech Blog

Chinese Hackers Get The Drop on Fashion Houses

John Phillips writes in The Washington Times:

Organized teams of Chinese hackers are breaking into the computers of Western companies to steal fashion ideas and counterfeit them before the genuine articles can hit the streets, Italy's domestic intelligence service reports.

"Platoons of seasoned, unscrupulous cyber pirates, crackers and hackers of every kind ... make up an exponentially growing and unstoppable army," says a report made public in Gnosis, a magazine published by Italy's SISDE counterintelligence agency.

As much as 20 percent of Internet viruses and "spam" messages that jam e-mails around the world originate in China, the article claims. It says Chinese mobsters profit most from pornography -- including sites that sell videos for pedophiles and traffic in date-rape drugs, heroin and counterfeit medicines.

A spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington dismissed the "sensational" SISDE report as "irresponsible" and driven by "ulterior motives."

posted by Fergie @ 5/15/2007 01:04:00 PM