Chinese Hackers Call Truce in China-US Cyberwar

Chinese hackers, engaged in a "cyberwar" with their counterparts in the United States, boasted on Wednesday they had defaced 1,000 US Web sites, but called a truce to the conflict, according to a Chinadaily.com.cn report.

Tit-for-tat defacements across the Pacific linked to China-US tensions have caused untold damage to Web sites in both countries.

A statement by the Honker Union of China, carried by Chinese portal Chinabyte, said that having attacked 1,000 Web sites, their goal had been reached.

"Any attacks from this point on have no connection to the Honker Union," the statement said.

US hackers launched hostilities after an April 1 collision between a US spyplane and a Chinese jet fighter, which crashed into the South China Sea, killing its pilot.

They broke into hundreds of Chinese sites, leaving messages such as "We will hate China forever and we will hack its sites".

In response, the Honker Union -- an informal network of Chinese hackers -- announced on May 1 it would launch its own electronic graffiti blitz.

Companies on both sides of the Pacific have been scrambling to patch up security systems and to temporarily shut down Web sites deemed a security risk.

Two international Web sites which record and archive cases of hacked Web sites reported hundreds of defacements of Web sites ending with China's ".cn" domain since April 1.

Sino-US tension has been building since the spyplane collision.

Tension was exacerbated by US arms sales to Taiwan and tough comments by US president George W. Bush on defending Taiwan and a US decision to grant a visa to former Taiwan "president" Lee Teng-hui.

At least half a dozen high-profile Web sites in the United States had been defaced by apparent Chinese hackers, an Internet security expert in the United States said last week.

One message said:"Don't sell weapons to Taiwan, which is a province of China."

A US-based hacker who uses the name "pr0phet" wrote: "I want for (President Bush) to somehow know that he is supported with his decision to support Taiwan by most all hackers I know."

Hackers find weaknesses

Yongan, an executive at the Beijing-based network security firm NSFocus, said many Web sites will be vulnerable to hacker attacks until network administrators tighten up security of their servers.

Most hacker attacks, including Web site defacements, are made through a chain of passive servers that act as springboards.

"The only way to solve this problem is to improve the global network safety level, and to make sure that no computers are available for attackers to use," said Gao, who claimed to be a reformed hacker.

The Honker Union of China statement called for improving network security in China, and said that the sites that were violated were mostly small.

"Because of this incident, network security in China will see great improvement. At least, more people will become serious about building up network security," the statement said.

Clients of NSFocus, which include Hong Kong-based Web portal chinadotcom corp and China's dominant fixed-line telecoms carrier China Telecom, had detected more hacking attempts than usual over the May Day holiday period that ended on Monday, said Gao.

He also said that American hackers had targeted educational, commercial and government Web sites: "When hackers attack, they look for weaknesses, and they often pay little attention to the nature of the Web site."

Web portal Sina.com said on Wednesday it was struck by denial-of-service (DOS) attacks on the evening before May 1. Denial of service attacks flood a Web site with page requests, making it inaccessible to other users.

Honkers, who took their name from the Chinese word "Red hackers", have said they differ from other hackers because they do not act out of malice.

But all hackers represent a nasty threat to corporations -- not just to government networks -- because of their ability to access business secrets, such as when hackers logged on to software giant Microsoft Corp's in-house computers last October.






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