The Chinese government have certainly been grabbing headlines over the last few years with regards to the internet. Everything from starting their own Chinese-language internet inaccessible from the outside world to trying to hack into Google accounts. Now the government has decided to target hacker websites in order to show how committed they are to stamping out cyber crime. Those Chinese certainly understand irony, don’t they…

The latest news comes about a site which apparently had hundreds of thousands of registered users, with over ten thousand of those signing up for paid accounts which supposedly granted them access to hacking software. Needless to say this site has now been shut down and its owners thrown in a dark cell (well, probably).

Apparently this one was the largest “hacker training” website in China, and had earned over $1m in membership fees for its owners. The move to shut it down could be tied to the Google fiasco, saving face for a government increasingly seen as a meddling force in the future of the internet.