Hackers Are Front-Line Troops in This China-Taiwan Conflict

[mea culpa <jericho () DIMENSIONAL COM>]

From: "B.K. DeLong" <bkdelong () zotgroup com>

http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/MON/FIN/taipei.2.html

Paris, Monday, September 13, 1999
Hackers Are Front-Line Troops in This China-Taiwan Conflict
By Michael Laris Washington Post Service

BEIJING - It was shortly after 2 A.M. on Sunday in the ancient Chinese
capital of Luoyang, and Dong Ruiyong had just painstakingly restored the
city government's World Wide Web site after a crippling daylong hacker
attack. Then the electronic intruder came back for more.  Mr. Dong, who is
a local telecommunications official, said he suddenly saw the site
changing again. ''And then we saw his address, and it was from Taiwan,''
he added. ''It's not as if they were on the mainland, where if they did
this kind of damage people could deal with them.''

Web sites such as Luoyang's have become high-tech battlefields in a new
kind of conflict between China and Taiwan. Taiwan's supporters and its
opponents on the mainland are plastering dueling slogans on dozens of Web
sites on opposite sides of the Taiwan Strait, or shutting the sites down
altogether.

The battle started in July when President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan called
for Taiwan and China to be treated as equal states. The statement
infuriated China's leaders, who view Taiwan as a renegade province.

Now, the hackers are at war. Taiwan's National Security Bureau reported
that mainland hackers had broken into Taiwan computer networks 165 times
since August. Beijing has not released statistics but has acknowledged
hacker strikes.

Although the blows are delivered through cyberspace, the trail of wrecked
Web pages and crashed computers is causing immeasurable losses - in time,
money and data. It also has alarmed security specialists in both places by
pointing out their vulnerability.

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