Cyber Threat Actor: Chen

The threat actor is known bythe aliases Zhang and Chen and is located in China. In March 2014 the two individuals compromised the website of a college in Shanghai’s Songjiang District. They altered physical education scores for themselves and roughly two hundred classmates who had skipped mandatory lessons. The modifications were sold for a fee ranging from fifteen to twenty yuan per changed grade. This activity generated approximately eighty thousand yuan in illicit revenue before the school detected the manipulations. Upon discovery the institution remediated the web vulnerability and involved law enforcement, which led to the arrest of Zhang and Chen.

The incident demonstrates a financially motivated operation targeting the education sector in a single Chinese city, with no evidence of espionage, disruption, or state sponsorship reported. No malware families or specific toolkits were mentioned in the public account, indicating that the breach relied on exploiting a website vulnerability rather than deploying custom malicious software. Initial access was achieved through the identified web flaw, after which the actors altered score data via the compromised website. Attribution remains limited to the two named individuals, and no links to larger criminal consortia or government entities have been established publicly. The 2014 score‑alteration case stands as the sole publicly documented operation associated with Zhang and Chen, serving as a representative example of their activity. Consequently, the profile is confined to the facts presented in the source material, with no further details on broader campaigns or capabilities available.