February 23rd, 2009
Chinese hackers deface the Russian Consulate in Shanghai
That was fast. Chinese hackers collaborating with the Chinese Hacking Union, a two-years old training community for wannabe hackers, hacked and defaced the official web site of the General Consulate of the Russian Federation in Shanghai, PRC in response to the recent accusations that a Russian navy vessel has sank a Chinese cargo ship.
The message left on the now “under maintenance” site translates as follows:
“Russia invaded our territory to kill people from the People’s Republic. Hack done for the Chinese crew of controversy! Russia must be punished! ! ! Hacked BY: Yu”
In a related interview, profiling the hacker “Yu” after the Russian Consulate hack, he describes himself as a network security enthusiast that has been defacing Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and U.S sites for a while, but had to give up his activities due to college studies. Interestingly, he’s also insisting that education is the better choice in the long term, than the web site defacements he’s involved into.
- Go through related hacktivism/political hacking incidents - Pro-Serbian hacktivists attacking Albanian web sites; Hundreds of Dutch web sites hacked by Islamic hackers; 300 Lithuanian sites hacked by Russian hackers; Georgia President’s web site under DDoS attack from Russian hackers; Coordinated Russia vs Georgia cyber attack in progress; Thousands of Israeli web sites under attack
Yu’s hacking group, as well as the Chinese Hacking Union, are a great example of the diverse but highly de-centralized province-based IT underground scene in China. Largely inspired by the glorious China Eagle Union, the Red Hacker’s Alliance and the Hacker Union of China, new training communities keep popping-up like mushrooms - even gender based ones (Chinese female hacking group spotted).
The site of the Russian Consulate in Shangha remains serving a “The site is currently under maintenance! sorry for any inconveniences!” message.
Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, malware and cybercrime incident response. He's been an active security blogger since 2007, and maintains a popular security blog. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 02/23/09
