Spymaster warns of Chinese internet activity

The head of MI5, Britain's domestic security agency, has issued a warning to companies about China's widespread campaign of espionage on the internet.

Jonathan Evans has accused the People's Liberation Army of spying on companies doing business in China and even stealing data from them to benefit Chinese companies. This incident is believed to be the first time that a government has directly accused the Chinese of dubious internet activities. A summary of a letter from Jonathan Evans sent to various companies that do business in China, read: "The contents of the letter highlight the following: the director-general's concerns about the possible damage to ... business resulting from electronic attack sponsored by Chinese state organizations, and the fact that the attacks are designed to defeat best practice IT security systems."

The Chinese government has yet to react to Mr Evans' allegations. British prime minister Gordon Brown is set to visit China in January of next year.

Russian hacking site disappears

The notorious Russian web hosting service Russian Business Network (RBN) has disappeared from the internet after it became the focus of intense media scrutiny.

RBN provided internet services to organized crime and cyber criminals, it has been reported. The company was called a "hub" of internet crime, including child pornography, identity theft, phishing scams and spam mail. The St Petersburg-based company always denied the allegations, however it has now abandoned most of its internet addresses.

A network architect at Trend Micro, Paul Ferguson, told PC World: "The routing information for their IP addresses has been withdrawn. "That's significant because while RBN has had connectivity issues in the past, then the routing [to its IP addresses] was still being advertised. This time, they've been voluntarily withdrawn."

Many have theorized that the outfit is merely relocating, with some hypothesizing that they are setting up in China, Taiwan or Turkey.

Yahoo! makes apology

An apology has been issued by a Yahoo! executive on the company's failure to inform US authorities about China's request for information on an internet user.

The information resulted in the imprisonment of the Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who has been sentenced to a decade behind bars. Executive vice president of the company, Michael Callahan, admitted to a House Foreign Relations panel last year that Yahoo! gave information to the Chinese government. Later, after learning why the request was made and the nature of the information in question, Mr Callahan did not tell US lawmakers.

He said: "I neglected to directly alert the committee of this new information, and that oversight led to a misunderstanding that I deeply regret and have apologized to the committee for creating." Next week Mr Callahan and Jerry Yang, Yahoo!'s chief executive are to appear before the House committee to answer more questions over the affair.

Jailed hacker offered jobs

Since being sentenced to four years in jail for constructing one of the more damaging viruses seen recently, a Chinese hacker has seen a deluge of job offers.

Li Jun, 25, created the Fujacks worm, which infected computers worldwide and stole passwords and usernames. Earlier this week the hacker was convicted in a Chinese court along with three accomplices and given a four-year jail sentence. Now Li's lawyer has said that up to ten companies are competing to hire the cyber criminal upon his release from incarceration.

One of the companies that wants to employ Li is Jushu Technology, based in the city of Hangzhou. It wants to give him a job paying one million yuan ($133,155) per year. Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with the software company Sophos, said that offering the hacker a job was "perverse" and rewarded his "criminal act, infamy and bad behavior".