The trial of the largest known so far Trojan Horse computer crime in China has started in the Xuzhou City of Jiangsu Province on 12 August 2009.
According to the news reports, there are 11 suspects in the trial. The suspects created a Trojan Horse program named “Tender” to steal userid and password of online game players. There were about 40 online games affected including games from QQ and NetEase.
Tender were mainly placed in online game related websites. When online game players visited the infected websites, Tender would be automatically installed in their computers. Some of the infected websites were hacked by the suspects. However, some infected website owners worked with the suspects and installed Tender intentionally.
Tender stole userid and password when the online gamers logged in to play online games. The suspects then transferred the virtual currency and weapons from the online gamers to the accounts of the suspects. The suspects would sometimes also stole the online gamers’ bank account information.
The scale of Tender:
- Suspects involved: about 110 suspects involved in the development, distribution, and money laundering.
- Investigation: the police investigation spaned 16 different provinces.
- Online game affected: about 40
- Infected websites: about 1800
- Amount involved: RMB 30,000,000
- Number of password stolen: about 8 million
