Hacker shut down plate auction

SHANGHAI: A 22-year-old hacker has been detained for attacking the private vehicle license plate auction system in Shanghai on July 18, which caused the cancellation of the scheduled auction at the last minute, police in Shanghai said yesterday.

The suspect surnamed Zhou from Zhejiang province was alleged to have attacked the auction system by manipulating thousands of computers during the auction, in an attempt to get a license plate at a lower price.

The attack by Zhou was called a denial-of-service attack, which means that Zhou remotely controlled thousands of computers that sent a huge number of requests to the server, which led to its breakdown, according to police investigations.