China's criminal hacking community has at least 400,000 hackers, and its proliferate activities are sucking 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) out of the country's economy annually, Zheng Bu, a former executive of cybersecurity firm FireEye, revealed.

The results of a 2016 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey revealed a 417 percent year-on-year increase of "detected security incidents" ranging from malware, ransomware, stolen data, among others, according to the International Business Times. The survey was conducted on 330 CEOs and IT directors of both local and international companies in China and Hong Kong.

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"There is a large criminal ecosystem in China," Bryce Boland, chief technology officer of FireEye's Asia-Pacific region, said.

The report further revealed that predators particularly prey on customer databases as China begins to fully embrace on the mobile payment services such as WeChat Wallet and Alipay. Furthermore, automatic connections to a public WiFi, which are common to China, can be an attractive avenue for hackers to access data.

 "Hackers in China often make a decoy Wi-Fi access points, and if you connect to them, they can access whatever is on your phone," Mangesh Fasale, a malware analyst at F-secure, warned.

The report showed that at least 50 percent of institutional hacks were inside jobs. Sensitive client information such as usernames and credit card details are commonly and easily leaked since people register their personal information online like when going to websites or trade shows, Kenneth Wong, PwC's cybersecurity head for China and Hong Kong, said.

Lester Ross, a partner in the Beijing office of law firm WilmerHale, pointed two reasons why hackers hack. "First, to extort, to force a company or individual to pay money in order to resolve a problem. And second, to extract proprietary information to benefit somebody else, possibly another company or the government."

However, given China's widespread government restrictions on security technology, businesses and individuals are having a hard time fighting against cyber threats, Bloomberg reported.

China's new proposed cybersecurity law aims to further tighten the belt as it requires both local and foreign firms in China to host corporate data exclusively on Chinese servers. It also obligates hardware, network equipment, and other services to get accreditation from local authorities before being used or sold in the country.          

"China is trying to have more control over cybersecurity technology, which is not something that's ever done to increase the quality of cybersecurity," John Pescatore, director at SANS security, said.

Tagscyber crime, Cyber Criminals, cybersecurity, hackers