The company's founders plan on hiring hackers to help them deal with the incident

Dec 2, 2013 13:40 GMT  ·  By

The official website of China’s Coal Bank (meitanbank.com) was hacked on Friday. The bank’s founders believe that financial institutions from Japan and their Chinese partners are behind the attack.

According to Global Times, the hackers have posted a message on the defaced website in which they accuse the China Coal Bank of offending many people. The attackers also accuse the organization of driving up the share prices in the coal and nonferrous metal sectors.

Representatives of the JinBen Investment Group Co., one of the founders of the coal bank, have told the Chinese publication that the attack was carried out from a large number of Japanese IP addresses. The company says it has also identified attacks against employees and wiretaps in its offices.

JinBen does not plan on alerting the authorities. However, it plans on taking action against the attackers. More precisely, the firm says it might consult with the Honker Union of China, a hacker group.

The website of the China Coal Bank was launched around one month ago. The organization is highly controversial. Officially, 15 coal companies have contributed to its creation, but some of them have publicly denied having anything to do with it.

The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), which should approve the establishment of the new bank, hasn’t made any comments yet.

Experts say that the coal bank might be beneficial for coal companies, but “it will hurt the interests of commercial banks.”

Some environmental groups also oppose the creation of the financial institution, arguing that it will have a negative impact on China’s efforts to reduce pollution.

At the time of writing, meitanbank.com is inaccessible. A mirror of the defacement is available via Google.