From: William Knowles (wkC4I.ORG)
Date: Fri Apr 13 2001 - 03:55:58 CDT

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http://www.washtech.com/news/media/8997-1.html

By Ariana Eunjung Cha,
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 12, 2001; 9:52 PM

The diplomatic standoff over the collision of a U.S. surveillance
plane and a Chinese jet fighter may be over. But hard feelings still
linger in cyberspace.

On message boards and in e-mails, angry Chinese commentators plot
revenge for the death of pilot Wang Wei. They encourage Chinese
loyalists to take to their keyboards and strike at U.S. Web sites.

Hack the USA!!! commanded one posting. For our pilote [sic] Wang!!!
For our China!!!

Since the accident occurred on April 1, no fewer than nine U.S.
government and business sites have been attacked. Most of the attacks
were simple vandalism, with an official Web page being replaced by one
with a political message.

Two Navy sites that are not militarily critical were targeted; only
one was defaced. A Navy spokeswoman said she cant say for sure that
the perpetrators were in China but said the attacks did appear to be
coming from there.

Computer users who tried yesterday to pull up a forum for artists and
writers in Marin County, Calif., at www.iplexmarin.com, found instead
a giant red Chinese flag, threatening messages and audio of the
Chinese national anthem.

This is becoming a cyber-mob, said Michael Assante, a security
consultant with Vigilinx Inc. and a former U.S. government
intelligence officer. Really, China is quite threatening in that they
have a lot of nationalism as well as a lot of technology.

Assante and other computer experts said administrators of U.S. Web
sites should take the recent Chinese attacks as a warning that their
electronic defenses are inadequate. Just last week, a House committee
issued a report saying that hackersof many nationalitieshad gained
control of at least 155 government computer systems last year.

The recent rash of apparent collision-inspired hacking is not without
precedent. Chinese vigilantes have been bullying their way through the
virtual world since around 1998, defacing Web sites and releasing
viruses into computer systems, experts say.

They are different from other foreign hackers, security experts say,
in that they are not motivated by money like hackers from struggling
regions such as the former Soviet republics or the Philippines. For
the Chinese, its almost always about politics, the experts say.

After the Taiwanese president said last year that his country and
China should speak on a state-to-state basis, Chinese compatriots
launched more than 100,000 attacks on Taiwan government sites. And
when some Japanese at a public rally refused to acknowledge that they
had committed any atrocities during the 1937 Nanking massacre, Chinese
hackers began putting gory pictures of victims on Japanese government
Web sites.

The surveillance plane dispute has so riled many Chinese that they
have been voicing their anger in a way that might not have been
possible even in a democracy in the pre-Internet era.

Using portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com or more obscure sites such
as illusa.abc.yesite.com, the organizers list simple-to-use hacking
tools, suggest targetsand encourage the general populace to join in.

At a time when high technology can make war impersonalwith pilotless
planes and laser guided bombsthe Internet has become a way for people
to fight, even when the enemy is far away, experts say. Theyre picking
up their keyboards instead of guns and stick and rocks, said Joel De
La Garza of Silicon Valleys Securify.com.

Many of the recent hackings were signed by the Hackers Union of China,
also known as the Honkers Union of China or the red guest alliance.
Max Vision, a security consultant who has been monitoring the group,
describes it as a very loosely organized band. On its Web site,
cnhonker.com, the group calls itself a network security organization.

Members of the group did not respond to e-mail inquiries, and the FBI
declined to comment on any recent hacking from China.

A small company called Intelligent Direct Inc. in Wellsboro, Pa., has
been fending off the hackers for a week. The companys president, Dan
Olasin, said that each time it managed to get its sales page of its
www.zipcodemaps.com online, it was replaced with the Chinese flag and
messages such as China have atom bomb too, as well as fairly profane
comments about someones mother.

He said he didnt know why his company had been targeted, but he
thinksor hopesthe attacks have subsided.

Olasin said the incident has given him time to reflect on how the
Internet, once hailed as way to erase borders, was becoming a powerful
tool for acting out nation-state animosities.

He said he wishes he could tell the hackers: I understand your
frustration. Its a touchy situation for all of us. Im not sure why
youre taking this out on me but maybe if I sent you a picture of
myself and my staff, you might say what you want to say without all
the damage.

*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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