We reported on May 7 that Chinese computer hackers, in retaliation for the U.S. spy plane crash, were able to hack into White House computers and shut their internet down for several hours.
Now they have declared a ceasefire and conceded defeat due to U.S. countermeasures. ?By the end of May 9,? according to Chinabyte, based in Beijing, ?more than 1,100 of our nation?s websites were defaced to differing degrees, with 72 percent of the websites belonging to the government or educational institutes.
?From now on our work should be concentrated on raising the security awareness of our webpage workers and installing firewalls and other Internet security products.?
According to the loose group of hackers known as the Hongke (Honker) or Red Hackers, more than 1,000 U.S. websites were attacked during the cyber war that stretched from May 1 to May 9. ?Although Chinese hackers have reported over 1,000 attacks on American websites by the end of May 9, they called for an end to the cyber war with the U.S. and announced a ceasefire,? according to a Honker statement on the Sina.com website. ?Beginning from now, any subsequent hacker attacks are unrelated to the Honker?s Union.?
The Honkers urged Chinese software engineers to develop new software so that China is not so dependent on American-made products that can be easily hacked by U.S. computer engineers.
During the recent hacker war, a lot of damage was inflicted on U.S. websites. ?Pro-China hackers have destroyed all data on web servers to which they were able to gain access and deface,? says the U.S. anti-hacking firm iDefense. The Chinese violated the code of hacker etiquette in which a page may be defaced but data on servers is not altered. ?While not all servers were wiped, many [website administrators] have reported this destructive behavior. Wiping a server?s operating system is extremely destructive and unusual for defacements.?
Opinion: A film came out in 1975 titled ?Rollerball? starring James Caan, in which international conflicts were settled at cut-throat sporting events. The film is being remade this summer. The current administration wants to reactivate Star Wars, but maybe they should stick to Computer Wars, since it?s clear that we’ve got the hotter hackers. It would be great if all future skirmishes could be fought via website.
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