The Dark Visitor

Not all Shanzhai’s are created equal.

A Nanjing area prosecutor’s office has arrested four chief suspects in connection with a fraudulent internet scheme. The suspects used a fake Alibaba website (in Chinese, a blatant knock-off  is referred to as “Shanzhai”)  and 400 cell phones to steal hundreds of thousands of yuan from residents in more than 20 provinces and cities.

On 9 April 2008, Nanjing resident Li stated he received notification from Alibaba’s “information system” that his account had been selected as the grand prize winner in a lottery sponsored in cooperation between Alibaba and the Sony Corporation.   The grand prize was 38,000 yuan in cash and a Sony notebook.

Li clicked on the link provided showing the contest’s details and rules. The website also gave a telephone number 40067588XX, which he called numerous times to talk with people who identified themselves as the “Alibaba staff.”  Li used his ATM card to pay contest fees such as “award taxes,” “personal income tax,” “express mail fees, “award insurance,”…etc. The total on that bill came to 26,550 yuan.  Li finally figured out the whole thing was a scam…tears of pride were shed in Nigeria.

Much more stuff but bottom line…

Shanzhai, it is only funny when we do it to you.

Just posted one of the breaking stories in China and now another is moving up the list of top searches in China.   A man in Guangzhou was killed when his cellphone exploded.  This was the 9th such incident reported since 2002.

She is called the “Xidan Girl” or “Guitar MM (MM stands for MeiMei, little sister).” Still trying to piece the whole story together but here is the gist:

She started out as something of a music prodigy in a small town in Sichuan playing the Chinese lute and singing.  At 17, the Xidan Girl outgrows her little town and heads for the big city, Beijing.  There she supports herself by playing in the bars and subway of Xidan District.  A typical scene is of of her sitting on a small blue stool playing the guitar.

Internet fame comes when a guy named “Li Er,” who received his notoriety by snapping pictures of girls without them knowing it, takes her photo and posts it in popular forums.  It makes the Net Ease top-10 list in 2007 and a fan club develops around her calling themselves the “stools.”  They even start an online forum dedicated to her.

(Gets fuzzy here) Apparently she tried to get into the Beijing School of Advanced Contemporary Music and hit a snag; afterward, she no longer went to the subway to play or sing.  This sent her fan club into a “human flesh search engine” frenzy trying to find her true identity.  They formed the “Surreptitious Picture Taking Organization” and held a meeting at Sanlitun in Beijing.

All the internet buzz lands her a meeting with an entertainment company but no word on the outcome.  In September of 2007, Jiang Hanning (her real name) starts attending an unidentified music school in Beijing.

Her name appeared at the top of Baidu today and there are also some news articles with video of her singing.  Compared to most of the human flesh engine search stories, this one appears to have a somewhat happy ending…so far.

While C and VB languages are a bit more popular, the Chinese programming language “Easy” is coming into fashion.

Chinese hackers used Easy to compile “Worm.Win32.AutoRun.kkr.” According to Micropoint Anti-Virus, the worm’s icon is “” (some of you computer smart guys may need to patch this section up a bit) and when installed won’t reveal hidden documents and conceals known extensions.

Via: Fergdawg

In 2007, the official website of Dolphin Stadium was compromised with malicious code linked to a javascript file inserted into the header of the front page.  The redirect ended up at domain registered in China.

Just sayin’…