Some of China’s scrappiest hackers-for-hire are evolving into full-service private intelligence agencies, exploiting advances in artificial intelligence and other technologies to put stolen secrets of foreign governments at the fingertips of the country’s security agencies. A trove of internal data belonging to a China-based cybersecurity company, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, provides a new window into an evolution that international cybersecurity experts have tracked in recent years. The material turns the table on hackers by providing an inside view of how they operate. It shows the company, Zhengzhou Zhirong Network Technology Co., or ZRON, offering a menu of sensitive data that is presented as coming from the government email systems of China’s rivals and friends alike.

Full analysis : Chinese hacker-for-hire company ZRON is selling stolen foreign intelligence and using AI systems to make the data more accessible for police.