Chinese Hackers Prepare To Defend The Motherland

Fuelled by anti-Western nationalism, patriotic Chinese hackers have come to the defence of the motherland in response criticism of Beijings handling of recent pro-independence riots by ethnic Tibetans.

The hackers are believed to be behind recent attacks on several US websites and a Chinese website run by the French supermarket chain Carrefour.

Scott Henderson, a former US Army intelligence analyst who wrote a book about Chinese hackers called The Dark Visitor, has been tracking developments on his blog and says that whats happened over the past week may be the opening salvo in new cyber war.

The hackers, he says, are working independently from the government but with its tacit support. "Once they [the hackers] get started, its very hard to put the genie back in the bottle," he said in a telephone interview. "It does seem to be escalating and its feeding on itself."

Henderson has spotted a notice posted on one of the Chinese hacker sites warning of a planned "counter-attack" by a US-based Poizon BOx - the hacker group at the front lines during a Sino-US cyber war in 2001 sparked off by the death of a Chinese fighter pilot who was killed in a mid-air collision involving a US spy plane.

"Red Alert: Beware of the United States hacker organization Poizon B0x coming in again," the translated message reads.

Henderson admits that its impossible to know if there really is some planned counter-attack or if this is just part of the methods used by the Chinese hackers to "ratchet up the rhetoric" and build on the recent minor successes.

Last week, US broadcaster CNN was targeted in a dedicated denial of service (DDoS) attack intended to interrupt its news website. The attack was repelled "resulting in countermeasures that caused the service to be slow or unavailable to some users in limited areas of Asia", CNN reported.

In a DDoS attack, hackers flood a targeted website with thousands of automated requests for service in order to jam the works.

It came just before a planned attack against the CNN website by a group calling itself Revenge of the Flame - in reference to the Olympic Torch - was called off.

CNN has been accused of skewing its news coverage of the crackdown in Tibet to cast China in a negative light in the lead up to the summer Olympic Games.

CNN commentator Jack Cafferty further inflamed the situation when earlier this month, he labelled Chinese goods "junk" and its leaders a "bunch of goons and thugs".

Over the weekend, hundreds of Chinese protesters staged a demonstrating outside CNNs Hollywood office chanting slogan and waving placards denouncing CNNs perceived bias and calling for Caffertys sacking.

In a similar vein, a new website called anti-cnn.com has sprung up documenting what are claimed to be examples of biased reporting by CNN and other Western news outlets.

The hackers claimed their first scalp earlier this week, bringing down sportsnetwork.com, a US-based sports website apparently in the mistaken belief that it was part of the CNN empire.

For more than 24 hours after the attack, the website carried a message from management saying that the site had been "hacked by a political entity from China" and was temporarily offline.

The carrefour.com.cn website has been only showing a message from management in Chinese and English saying that the site is undergoing an "upgrade and maintenance".

Carrefour has borne the brunt of Chinas anger over the way the Olympic torch relay was disrupted during its brief transit through Paris earlier this month and the subsequent threat by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to boycott the opening ceremony of the Games.

In recent days, a number of demonstrations have be staged outside Carrefour stores around China amid calls for shoppers to boycott the supermarket chain.

But online is where the much of the action is taking place and things could be about to heat up in the run up to May 4 - the anniversary of an anti-imperialist student demonstration in 1919 that led to the birth of the Communst Party.

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