The Chinese authorities have shut a training website for hackers and arrested three of its organisers, Chinese state media reported today.

The Black Hawk Safety Net site taught thousands of people how to launch cyber attacks and supplied malware, the China Daily said.

Officials in Hubei province said the hacking site was the largest in the country.

The reports come less than a month after Google said it was no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service, citing a cyber attack targeting the emails of human rights activists along with intellectual property which it said originated in China.

Local media said the police raid had taken place in late November, but there was no explanation of why the incident was only being reported now.

The site had recruited more than 12,000 "VIP" members since it launched in 2005, collecting more than 7m yuan in membership fees, the China Daily reported. Another 170,000 people had registered for free membership.

Officials froze 1.7m yuan in assets and seized nine web servers, five computers and a car as well as shutting down all the sites involved in the case, the newspaper reported.

Hubei police said the case had its roots in a hacking which happened in 2007.

"I could download trojan programs from the site which allowed me to control other people's computers," a 23-year-old user quoted by the China Daily said.

"I did this just for fun, but I also know that many other members could make a fortune by attacking other people's accounts.

"It is not very difficult to do simple hacker tasks. Some hacker members are teenagers who dropped out of school and make money by stealing accounts."

The paper also quoted a student who said several well-known hacking sites had been inaccessible since November. It is not clear when the Black Hawk site became unavailable.

The 20-year-old student said he had previously registered with three different training sites which offered courses costing from 100 to 2,000 yuan.

"Basically, students were told how to steal accounts and use trojan programs," he added.

"Sometimes trainers show us how to write programs. But now it's very difficult to become a registered member.

The three people arrested are suspected of offering others online attacking programs and software, the China Daily said.

It is thought the offence was introduced when laws were revised last year.

Officials responded to Google's announcement by saying China was "resolutely opposed" to hacking.

A spokesman for the ministry of industry and information technology has described China as the biggest victim of the practice, saying hackers tampered with more than 42,000 websites last year.