Experts urge government to protect 'white-hat hackers'

Security experts have called on the government to protect "white-hat hackers", information security personnel who use their online hacking skills to help maintain internet safety, through legislation in order to strengthen national security.

Huang Daoli, director of the Ministry of Public Security's cybersecurity legal studies center, said during a security forum held in Beijing last week that it is vital to employ "white-hat hackers" to discover security loopholes and make related reports in legal ways.

"Cybersecurity protection should be improved by rule of law. I am happy to see our country's first online security law is being made," Huang said. "Legal protection will provide information security personnel with confidence to conduct more in-depth studies of cyberattacks and fight against them."

Ma Ning, a researcher at Xi'an Jiaotong University's information security law research center, echoed Huang's sentiments, saying that improved cybersecurity protection requires joint efforts from "white-hat hackers", the government and technological or internet enterprises.

It is necessary to set up online alerts and information sharing systems to discover and analyze security risks, and develop measures to solve them, Ma said, adding that such actions should be conducted in a legal environment.

Yan Hanbing, deputy director of the operations department at the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center of China, praised contributions made by "white-hat hackers" over the past few years, saying it has developed and issued a self-discipline rule for them as they deal with security risks.

A report published in February last year by Qihoo 360, China's largest security software provider, said that the number of ethical hackers has increased rapidly in the past three years, with almost 70 percent of them born in the 1990s and 2 percent born after 2000.

"White-hat hackers" usually advise businesses and government departments about Web security loopholes and some are said to be rewarded in line with how significant the risks they discover are.