Chinese hackers

The Green Army was founded by a Shanghai hacker going by the online name of Goodwell, it was reported to have had a membership of around 3,000 people from Shanghai, Beijing, and Shijiazhuang. The other four key members of the group went by the pseudonyms Rocky , Dspman (HeHe), Solo, and LittleFish. It also attracted others, considered to be part of China's first generation hackers, the likes of Xie Zhaoxia, Brother Peng, PP (Peng Quan), Tian Xing (Cheng Weishan), IceWater (Huang Lei), and Little Rong. The group disbanded in 2000 and its rise and fall was described as "confusing" by insiders who consider it one of the enduring symbols of the Chinese hacker movement. The Green Army is said to have hacked "uncountable foreign web sites." Indeed, many of China's top hackers were past members of this group.

So, where is he now you ask? Apparently he is spending quite a bit of time playing World of Warcraft and doing a bang up job. In an interview with wow.duoban.com, Goodwell was congratulated for his world record breaking move from level 60 to 70 in under 24 hours. There were some details in the article about how he achieved this feat but it had a bunch of World of Warcraft stuff I don't understand...but he did it...without hacking...he said. During the interview,which was conducted in September of 2007, he intruduced himself as the founder of the Green Army Hacker Organization Goodwell (Real name Gong Wei).

Screen name: Silver Dragon

Real name: Goodwell (Gong Wei)

Occupation: Hunter

Faction: Tribe

Server: 7th Region? An Geluo

Guild: Green Base

Apparently, there were some problems when his guild (over 2,000 players) was located on the 5th Region server (Unsure of the the translation for servers as regions) for moving up too quickly in ranking. So, they changed their name from the Chinese for Green Army Corps to the English word Greenbase. He Just can't seem to let go of the old days...and that should scare you WOW players.

One of the unique aspects of the Chinese hacker organization is their nationalism, which is in stark contrast to the loner/anarchist culture many associate with the stereotypical Western hacker. They are especially active during periods of political conflict with other nations and until very recently have maintained a strict code of never hacking inside China. Their sense of patriotism in defending their national honor and their stringent codes have helped bolster their reputation among the Chinese people and aided in recruiting thousands of members.

Indeed, a strong argument can be made that it was political activism that initially brought the group together. A central question surrounding the organization is what type of relationship/affiliation if any it has with the government? Is it an officially authorized apparatus of the state or is it merely used as a surrogate to enforce Beijing's political view? Are there two groups working inside China, one a civilian organization and the other a branch of the People's Liberation Army? Is it possible that they work in conjunction with one another or does the civilian organization serve as a cover to disguise military operations?

The next most important series of questions that need to be answered concern the connection of the group to criminal activities. Is this the same set of Chinese hackers that media headlines claim are involved in Internet crimes such as phishing, pharming, and blackmail? How are they financed? Is there a darker side to this seemingly patriotic group?

Given the popularity of hacking in China, there is a large market for magazines and books about the subject. Who better to provide these products than the hackers themselves? HackerXfiles produces a hacker magazine with a CD that retails for nine RMB or US $1.10. Hacker.com sells their magazine, Hacker Defense Online for 19.80 RMB or US $2.45.

Even Movie Deals?

On 23 August 2005, Chinese Educational Television reporter, Wang Zhonglang, interviewed RedHacker stationmaster Sharp Winner about his new book The Turbulent Times of the Red Hackers. During the course of the discussion, Sharp Winner made some interesting comments on the reasoning and commerciality of the enterprise. He stated that the original plan was to have the book published on their web site. However, after further consideration, he wanted to make it available to everyone so they could better understand the hacker culture. The theme of the book revolves around the Red Hacker Alliance defending the country against a large-scale computer attack, to include an overseas spy ring.

When asked about the book becoming a movie, Sharp Winner admitted that he was involved in negotiations with investors and if it could be settled, he would ask Zhang Yimou, one of China's most famous directors, to shoot the film. He also detailed his plan to market numerous Red Hacker souvenirs, to include hats, T-shirts, sunglasses and even the props used in the movie. Asked about what was going on with the group, Sharp Winner replied that the group had established a club and future projects included promoting Red Hacker training and more books.

Skytalk's hack of Taiwanese web site

The evening of 18 March 2000 would see another wave of offensive attacks against the Taiwanese following the election of pro-independence presidential candidate Chen Shuibian. A hacker calling himself Sky Talk left the following message:

"Sky Talk here. I'm from Zhejiang, but I am working outside of the province. My monthly salary is 800 Renmenbi (RMB). I'm not poor, and not rich. I wear warm clothes and eat well enough. I'm a normal person, one of the common herd, of no social standing at all. I didn't even go to high school! Altering the pages of a few Taiwanese web sites was done completely out of rage! If you want to split up China, I think every Chinese person feels just like me when it comes to this attitude! You're attacking our web sites in China, and last night there was even a 'cute' so-called 'hacker' who was interested in the HTTPD of my personal computer. Ha ha%u2026his IP address was (address deleted). You can see that I don't need to explain the intensity of your attack on me! Let me give a warning! I have stopped cracking Taiwanese host computers, but when I heard about your counterattacks and the destruction of several Chinese web sites, my patience has limits. Last night I entered your host computers for National Defense. I'd planned to do a deltree/y c:\, but then I thought that this might start a hacker war! Considering that this would benefit no one, I exited Telnet and closed the port, and may have closed port 80 at the same time (I'm terrible at this! : )) I'm putting up a gallery! I hope that you can leave this dispute behind!!"

Register Your Website on Baidu, China's Largest Search Engine

Wanted to get my website registered on Baidu (this is China's equivalent of Google) and thought it might be difficult for people who can't read Chinese, so I translated their registration form. It is very simple to do; who knows if they will actually add the site but its worth a try. Remember they have close to as many English speakers as we do. The registration form is located here.

The url is http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html if you want to paste it.

To view the form go to

http://www.thedarkvisitor.com/november2007/baidureg.html

UPDATE: IT WAS LISTED ON BAIDU! So, it does work.

First stop is the website Zone-h.cn,nothing like the other Zone-h. It collects screenshots of websites hacked both inside and outside of China. Even though their banner claims to be only of Chinese hacked websites.

While looking around the site I notice the Top 10 teams located on the left side. When you click on one of the teams it lists all of the website hacks they have submitted; not the ones the have hacked...cough...just submitted. This is clearly stated at the bottom in the disclaimer. They have simply been in the vicinity of the hacking or heard about it and reported the incident. You might even call them good citizens.

Continue reading more at http://www.thedarkvisitor.com/november2007/hackhunt.html

Misadventures in Hunting Chinese Farmers

No, Chinese farmers are not part of the Chinese hacker community but are often associated with them. It seems that the hackers decided rather than spending their days fighting, collecting or fishing for virtual items, it was just easier to hijack accounts and steal them. Well, even that was a little too much work and they decided to hold the secondary market for ransom.

DoS attack cripples $1 billion virtual games trade

"A massive denial of service attack has disabled some of the world's largest virtual goods trading sites. The Korea-based sites hit by the attack are responsible for a substantial portion of the country's estimated $1bn trade in virtual gold, weapons and other items for games like World of Warcraft.

Spokesmen for some of the trading sites affected, which include ItemBay, ItemMania, ItemPF and ItemRia initially claimed that they were offline for technical reasons, local media report. Later, ItemRia admitted in an online notice that the outages have been caused by a flood of traffic, apparently directed by hackers. An ItemPF spokesperson has since made a similar admission, according to local media.

The sites have been difficult or impossible to access for at least the past four days, according to Korean media (links are in Korean). Error messages returned suggest that servers are overloaded or have been deliberately taken off line.

Read more...

http://www.thedarkvisitor.com/november2007/chinesefarmer.html