Chinese government websites attacked after Anonymous vow to support HK protests
Information from two government affiliated websites in Zhejiang province hacked, activists claim
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 12 October, 2014, 3:56pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 12 October, 2014, 5:13pm
Chris Luo
A person claiming to speak for activist hacker group Anonymous seen threatening Singapore in video released last year. Photo: AFP
The Anonymous group of computer hackers released hundreds of Chinese phone numbers and email addresses on Sunday morning shortly after the government denounced its threat of cyberattacks in apparent support of Hong Kong’s democracy movement.
The international hacker group released approximately 600 entries of contact information from China’s Zhejiang province in a message released early on Sunday morning.
Some of the entries show individual IP addresses and email addresses, while others carry names and mobile phone numbers.
With the release the group followed up on its threat from Friday to release data from Chinese government websites.
The targets of the latest attacks were the website of the Ningbo Free Trade Zone in Zhejiang province and a job search site run by the Changxing county administration, also in the coastal province.
It was not immediately clear why these two websites had been targeted. The government offices in charge of the two websites could not be reached on Sunday. China's Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are also not immediately available to comment.
To a large extent, the contact information revealed by Anonymous belonged to small local businesses searching for talent in Zhejiang.
Much of the information was already publicly available online.
Anonymous claimed it had already infiltrated more than 50 Chinese government databases and leaked 50,000 usernames and emails, saying it was fullfilling promises to “stand and fight alongside the citizens of Hong Kong”.
The group had earlier targeted websites in Hong Kong after issuing a first warning on October 2. In a public video message, Anonymous declared cyberwar on Hong Kong’s government and police force as punishment for the use of tear gas against demonstrators, and pledged to help Hongkonger’s struggle for democracy.
It threatened to hack into government databases and release personal information of government officials.
Anonymous made some sites either inaccessible or intermittently accessible on October 3.
The websites of the Silent Majority for Hong Kong, and the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, Chief Secretary for Administration Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, Hong Kong police, the Occupy Central civil disobedience movement, Ocean Park and the Hong Kong International Airport were targed at the time.
Michael Gazeley, managing director at security service provider Network Box, said it is difficult to “make a judgment whether [the earlier attacks] really are [the work] of Anonymous to start with” because Anonymous is a loosely associated group of hackers.
“It almost seems that there are some hackers that are trying to attack the government and other hackers trying to attack the Occupy Central website,” Gazeley said, referring to the first wave of attacks Anonymous claimed on Hong Kong websites.
"You can’t really be sure which actions are really [that of] Anonymous, or somebody claiming to be Anonymous, and if they can be definitely attributed to Anonymous.”
Gazeley added that the “Chinese government has got a lot of cyber security in place" as "they take security very seriously”, but it is difficult to assess what it would do in particular to respond to the potential attacks.
