China’s for-profit hackers lavish Communist Party officials with booze and women to curry favor and win contracts, leaked documents reveal [Video]

15:54 EST 08 Mar 2024 , updated 16:12 EST 08 Mar 2024

China‘s private hackers-for-hire take government officials out for lavish banquets, binge drinking and late-night karaoke with young women in a bid to win favor and business, according to a trove of leaked documents. 

Internal documents from a Chinese hacking firm called I-Soon were leaked online last month, revealing a seedy, sprawling industry where corners are cut and rules are murky in the quest to make money. 

Although the Associated Press verified the authenticity of the documents, experts cautioned that the leak appeared curated to cause maximum embarrassment for I-Soon and its CEO, Wu Haibo.

Wu, who goes by the hacker moniker ‘shutdown’, is one of China’s so-called ‘red hackers’ — patriots who offer the Chinese Communist Party their services for a fee. 

Over the past two decades, Chinese state security’s demand for overseas intelligence has soared, giving rise to a vast network of these private hackers-for-hire companies that have …