Chinese hacker arrested for blackmailing online gaming firm

A Chinese hacker allegedly involved in blackmailing an online gaming company has been arrested in east China's Wuxi city, a media report said on Friday.

Police arrested the hacker for attacking the servers of the company and extorting a protection fee. The arrest came after the online games could not run normally, prompting hundreds of complaints from its users. The hacker attacked the company's 20 servers between July 19 and 21 in 2015, state-run china.org.cn reported. After the attack, the hacker contacted the company and admitted that he had hacked its servers. 

He then extorted a protection fee of 1880 yuan (around $296) per month from the company, threatening it with repeated attacks if it refused to pay up. On August 12, the hacker attacked the company's servers again and this time asked it to pay the protection fee for December in advance. The company reported the case to the security authorities on July 22 in 2015. A number of US firms have complained of hacker attacks originating from China which Beijing consistently refute, saying it is also a victim of cyber attacks.