The Dark Visitor

In the male dominated world of Chinese hackers, females find it difficult to be accepted as equals. Their technical skills are often viewed as inferior to their male counterparts.

As far as I am aware, the first group of female Chinese hackers to break this mold were the Six Golden Flowers. The Golden Flowers have since broken up and gone their separate ways, but a new and larger group has taken their place, the Cn (China) Girl Security Team.

The website for the China Girl Security Team was registered on 12 Mar 2007 and currently has 2,217 members. The leader of the group Xiao Tian, is only 19 years old:

One of Xiao Tian’s chief lieutenants, who goes by the online name of Clever Without Equal (that’s close anyway), is dialed into just about every major Chinese hacker site on her blog:

Also linked through Clever’s blog is Evbs:

She seems to be getting the hang of this hacking thing:

That was my original title for this article but it has changed, now I consider
her the Keyser Soze (The Usual Suspects) of Chinese hackers.   I have gone through so many websites trying to figure out her past and just who she is that it has become a blur.  She is light, she is dark, she is mean, she is sweet, she is 26, she isn’t nearly that old…etc.  It is as hard to get a handle on her as it is to figure out the correct spelling of Keyser Soze, if that is indeed how it is spelled.  Anyway, I decided to just let you know what is not in contention and cut out all the other noise:

She was a member of the Six Golden Flowers until they broke up.  The line
underneath the picture at the top says:

“Don’t bring up the Six Golden Flowers with me again, I am developing on my own.”

Dark Angel’s Picture from The Six Golden Flowers

She goes by the names Dark Angel (黑暗天使) and Heihaitang (黑海棠).  As always with Chinese hackers, the meat to bone comes with the current website they run.  And, what she is doing now is using her reputation to sell hacker classes…just like every other Chinese hacker of any weight.

She offers 181 individual classes for about US $17 each (no deadline) and a year long structured course of 14 classes at US $170 (internal programs are free of charge).

It is rare to find mention of the role women play in Chinese hacker society, so I was surprised to find a page dedicated to the “Six Golden Flowers.” The text written on the pictures gives a small history of their years in hacking but little else.

Digging a little further showed that in 2007, security media sources inside China named one of the members of the “Six Golden Flowers” as the most active and influential Chinese hacker in the country.

Another member of the group has received a great deal of press and even a video tribute…
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