Despite its suspicious name, hackbase.com’s operators want to let people know it is a legitimate computer school for defensive purposes and not an illegal hacking school.

“We don’t train hackers, instead we provide professional training for Internet security. It’s up to the trainees whether they want to be a hacker or network administrator,” said Chen Qian, director of the training department.

The online classes are given in the evening and cover topics such as computer maintenance, anti-virus, data recovery, code protection and network attack and defense.

The courses, which cost between 398 to 1,998 yuan ($58- 292), are “easy” and aimed at everyone, even those without a college background or without English language skills, Chen said.

Kang Lingyi

According to reports, in 1999, Kang Lingyi participated in hacking the US Embassy and the White House over the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.   He then went on to fame founding several nationalist websites.

An international controversy has broken out over an article he published on one of his websites called, the China International Strategy Net.  In the article, Kang suggests that India can be removed as a competitor by intentionally encouraging separatists to bring about the collapse of the state.  The statements caused such an uproar that the Indian government was forced to issue a statement saying that the relationship between China and India was peaceful.

As of this writing, Kang’s website has a message up saying that the site is currently under maintenance.  It has been up all day so let the wild speculations begin:

1) Beijing took it down as a concession

2) Indian hackers

3) The boring option of site maintenance          

Also, sorry for the long delay in posting.  Just returned from a two-week trip to China, visited the cities of Beijing, Xi’an, Nanjing and Shanghai.  Returned to a ton of work,  a zillion e-mails, broke the blog and had the flu.  Pretty full week.

We really do appreciate your patience and concern, things should be running close to normal again.

In the last few days, the story of Yingcracker, “the most beautiful female hacker in China,” has been making the rounds  in Chinese news outlets and blogs.  Her exploits and earnings, in this male dominated society, have been posted by  numerous online sources.  The number of male friends added to her blog since the story first appeared have been impressive.

Problem: Yingcracker is a man baby! He thinks it’s kinda funny to pretend to be a MM (girl) online.  Xiao Tian e-mails me this:

I’m originally from down south and a local expression suddenly came back to me tonight.  We had this crazy guy named George, lived a couple of houses down the road, always doing really strange things.  I remember my uncle stopped by the house one day and said, “You know Ole George…law done come and got him.”  Not a word, just nods.  We all figured it was just a matter of time.

We’ve reported on Withered Rose here and here.  Time Magazine has more on him here.

Well, for some reason, Withered Rose decided to start DDoS attacks on his fellow Chinese hackers at Hackbase, HackerXFiles and 3800hk.  Speculation points toward website blackmail, which Rose and his gang have been notorious for in the past.  Needless to say, the victims didn’t take very kindly to this sort of hacker-on-hacker violence.

What is kind of surprising, is that the hacker organizations he decided to attack turned over all of their evidence to the Public Security Department.  According to the report from Hackbase, Withered Rose’s website has been shut down by authorities and he faces 7 1/2 years in jail…

Withered Rose’s website closed

Yep, law done come and got him.

The sign reads, “It is Everyone’s Responsibility to Boycott Evil Valentine’s Day.”  The boys from rednet.cn think that the people should resist this foreign holiday and concentrate on their own national holidays.

In their forum on rednet.cn, the topic of boycotting Valentine’s Day sparks much interest and support…not so much in the real world.  Only two or three people show up at the rally.

Dude, guys in the US have been trying for decades to get rid of this “evil” holiday with no luck.  If your campaign works, let us know.

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.

Following the incident, the website jieshibaobao.com (children that developed kidney stones) was established to allow parents of victims to communicate with one another and post pictures of their children and the ordeal they endured.  The website posts images of the children’s suffering and has become an advocate group for compensation.

A group of patriotic Chinese hackers have joined together to attack the  website and force it down.  They claim the website is illegal, posting photoshopped pictures and fabricating the condition of the patients.  This casts a bad light on China’s period of prosperity and therefore, jieshibaobao.com has become the target of resentful patriotic youth.

The website was under daily attack and unable to function.  Jieshibabao was forced to move their website to an overseas server in hopes of avoiding the attacks.  However, the large coalition of patriotic hackers continued the attack and shut it down again.

Chinese netizens were not uniform in their support of this action.  Many were solidly against it.

An angry Chinese lawyer accused Microsoft of perpetrating the biggest ever hacker attack in response to the software giant’s controversial move to trigger hourly screen blackouts on computers using pirated copies of Windows XP. [Cast your vote]

On October 20, Dong Zhengwei, a lawyer of Beijing Zhongyin Law Office, sent a complaint to China’s Ministry of Public Security, accusing Microsoft of invading personal computers without user permission or judicial authorization, the Beijing Times reported.

Dong said the judiciary should assign criminal responsibility for the Windows Genuine Advantage Program so called “Black Screen” scheme and halt this “illegal move”.

To fight software piracy Microsoft announced on October 15 that, starting October 21, Microsoft anti-piracy software would be automatically installed on users’ computers through the routine Internet-based update mechanism. If a computer fails a validation test, the desktop will change to a plain black background when the computer is restarted.

Read it all, Microsoft accused of hacking attack.