Li Jun, Wang Lei, Zhang Shun and Lei Lei are facing charges in a people's court in Hubei Province in connection with the creation and distribution of the Fujacks worm. The worm (also known as Worm.Whboy) made headlines earlier this year because it converts icons of infected programs into a picture of a panda burning joss-sticks as it steals usernames and passwords from online games players.
Li Jun is said to have confessed to having written the worm, and selling it to 12 clients for more than 100,000 yuan (US$12,500).
Under Chinese law the men could face five years or more in prison if convicted or writing and spreading the malicious software. According to prosecutors, the gang sold the personal information they stole online with Fujacks for thousands of dollars.
"As cybercrime has increasingly evolved into being driven by money, so the authorities are taking a harder line against its perpetrators," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Criminal hackers should think long and hard about whether the riches they accrue are really worth what could be a long spell in prison."
Earlier this year, computer users were advised to think carefully about how they remedy virus infections, following news that the Chinese police were planning to release a clean-up program written by Li Jun.
"It remains to be seen whether the-powers-that-be in China act more sympathetically to the worm's author as he apparently wrote a program to clean-up the infection," continued Cluley. "Our recommendation, however, remains to use legitimate anti-virus software to deal with a malware infestation - not to rely on a tool that may have been written by one of the hackers responsible for the outbreak in the first place."
