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The punk hackers  will attack any Web site just to prove their prowess.Chinese hackers say that every one of their attacks is aimed at achieving a form of justice in cyberspace that doesn't exist in the real world.

The hackers, who spend three-fourths of their waking life online, say the targets they have hit in the past year include "China's official human rights Web site and other government sites that try to fool the people."

One of them  says "hacking is growing so sophisticated [in China] that now you can find cyberassassins for hire." Their arsenals, he adds, "include everything from software to simply deface a Web site to "smart bombs" that can destroy the target's hard drive."

He adds, though, that while he and his friends sometimes team up with political dissidents to become cyber-rebels, they also morph into cyberpatriots when they think China is under attack from the outside.

After NATO bombed China's Embassy in Belgrade last year, "we went into overdrive to launch a counterattack. Over the next few days, we hit the White House and the Department of Defense's computer systems, and trashed the American Embassy's Web site."

A Western official here confirms the Embassy hit. "These guys were really good," he says. "We locked up the site when the [Chinese] protests started after the [May 1999] bombing, but when we opened the site for a few minutes, these guys got in and attacked."

But he says that "globalization must be matched by equalization.... In the Internet world, there are no superpowers, and countries that try to act like one will be subject to cyberattacks from "hackers for justice" all over the world."

He adds that the Internet is becoming the great equalizer, within and without China. "In the outside world, there are so many walls between people - class walls, cultural walls, and national walls," Sun says. "But the Web is like a ladder that helps us climb the walls, and maybe someday melt them."

On the Internet, people have more power. 

 

Author information. Copyright © [Telecom and Logistics Associates Sàrl]. All rights reserved. Revised: juin 01, 2000 .

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