The Dark Visitor

From what I can gather, this is the second year of the International E-Sports Festival, co-sponsored by China and South Korea. This year’s competition will be held in Wuhan, China on 10 Oct 2008. The screen shot above was posted at ief.com.cn/, which is billed as the official Chinese website of the 2008 International E-Sports Festival. The site now looks like this:

A little background on the games:

Planning for IEF was started in 2003 at the express request of China’s central government with the aim of providing positive, culturally appropriate Internet alternatives for Chinese youth. The government decided to pursue these objectives through the China Youth League, one of the most influential organizations in China. Many of China’s leaders, including President Hu, come from its ranks.

In November 2003, ‘e-sports’ was added as China’s ninety-ninth official sport by the Sports Bureau of the PRC’s Central Committee in order to add further importance to the objectives of the IEF. The organizing committee was formed to develop and implement initiatives to respond to the CPC’s constructive vision. Since then, the Committee has successfully developed and staged numerous very popular events under the banner of the IEF.

In January 2007 President Hu Jintao noted the success of IEF and issued policies designed to ensure the continuing development of culturally appropriate content and inculcating within China’s Internet community a culture of positive and innovative attitudes. In April 2007, the Central People’s Committee Political Bureau reinforced this policy by emphasizing the importance of developing a social-network model of Internet use by China’s youth.

Cont…

Several reports coming out of China are suggesting the attack was carried out because South Korean committee organizers cancelled a promise to open a Japanese area.  Furthermore, the hacker appeared to be…wait for it… Japanese.  Yeah, the “Turkish hacker Firtina Bozo was here..!!” seems to have been lost on them.  That one Hotmail address with a .jp tag must have blinded them to all other things contained in the message.

Just for fun I decided to see if there were other hacks by Firtina Bozo and let me tell you that is one busy individual.

Hacker illegally invades section of the official Red Cross website and tampers with solicited donation accounts

Verified by the Ministry of Public Security, a section of the official Red Cross website has been illegally hacked. According to the report, criminal elements gained access to the section of the website that held the special accounts for earthquake disaster relief donations.

An individual named Li Bujiu, had opened four fraudulent bank accounts to steal the funding.

The Ningbo Bank released a statement warning all citizens to be verify account numbers when making donations. The bank suggested using CCTV, TV, and newspapers as references to verify the accounts.

The falsified accounts were listed as follows:

Opened by Li Yaqiong at the Henan, bank: Agriculture Bank of China, ACCT #: 6228482080560018616;

Opened by Li Bujiu at the Commerce bank, ACCT #: 6222002201101753792;

Opened by Li Bujiu at the Agricultural bank, ACCT #: 6228480150082864813;

Opened by Li Bujiu at the Construction bank, ACCT #: 6227003526450024660;

Opened by Li Bujiu at the Postal Savings Bank, ACCT #: 6221886400011381263;

Opened by Lin Yumin at the Agricultural bank, ACCT#: 9559980150169780312

I think it was Eddie Murphy who once said, “The only reason you would want to do something like this is if you wanted to go to straight to hell and not wait in line!”

Started to wonder why all those hearts were appearing on Chinese blogs and the answer may just be, the Red Heart China MSN:

About 2.3 million Chinese MSN users have added a pattern of “red heart” and the English word “China” in front of their online signatures to show their unity and patriotism.

MSN China spokesman Feng Guangshun released the figure on Thursday. Many more people have opened their MSN accounts to find a message which asked them to add the “red heart” and “China” in front of their signatures.

A bit more on Red Heart from the Wall Street Journal:

When Xingrong Chen logged into MSN Messenger yesterday, she found a message from a friend inviting her to join China’s latest Internet craze:

“Please add (L) China after your name on MSN, to show the unity of Chinese people around the world. Please send this message to your friends on MSN.”

She followed the instruction and within a second, a red heart icon and the word “China” appeared beside her user name.

“I have no idea who first raised this idea, and it doesn’t matter.” the 24-year old Shanghai resident said, “My MSN contact list is red all over now!”

Youku video of people explaining Red Heart China:

Well, apparently not everyone is as excited about this new wave of patriotism sweeping China. According to many news sources in China (24 April 08), the man who originated the Red Heart China signature has had his website 5sai.com hacked.

1. CEO Chen Huaiyuan said that the day before yesterday, the 5sai.com website came under attack from four foreign IP addresses and as of last night, the attacks still had not stopped
2. Statistical data from the 5sai.com server showed that the IP addresses were located in Europe
3. During the high frequency periods of the attack they were receiving two to three attacks every second and during the low peaks it was three to four attacks every minute