Dissidents Hack Holes in China’s New Wall

The land that brought the world the Great Wall has built a new barrier on its ultimate frontier. This shield, like its predecessor, is designed to repel invaders and protect China from their foreign ideas.

Dubbed “the Great Chinese Firewall,” it is a series of Internet blocks and filters meant to stop Chinese citizens from seeing online news and opinions that differ from the government’s political line. But just as the miles of mud and stone erected centuries ago failed to keep China’s citizens in and invaders out, this cyber-barrier is being breached by a new generation of computer experts.

They call themselves “hacktivists,” electronic guerrillas with political agendas ranging from ending censorship to outright sabotage.

With names such as Bronc Buster, Cult of the Dead Cow and the Hong Kong Blondes, they sound more like rock bands than enemies of the people. But the Chinese government is taking them seriously.

They claim to have defaced government Web sites, torn down firewalls and disabled a satellite, and to possess the tools to infiltrate government computer networks. They have linked up with political activists.

“We are computer experts, and above that we like the concept of free speech,” said the Chinese editor of VIP Reference, an electronic magazine based in Washington that is e-mailed into China. The Chinese-born editor uses the English alias Richard Long to protect his family back on the mainland.

“We are destined to destroy the Chinese system of censorship over the Internet,” declared the editor. “We believe that the Chinese people, like any other people in the world, deserve the rights of knowledge and free expression.”

VIP Reference contains exactly what the filters are meant to keep out: articles and essays about democratic and economic evolution in China. The name itself is a play on the Reference News, a publication with similar content but for top cadres’ eyes only. Editors say VIP Reference is for China’s real VIPs--ordinary people.

Magazine Is Sent to 250,000 in China

Editors have found one easy way to get around the Internet roadblocks, which can stop access to specific Web sites but aren’t as easily able to screen private e-mail. The group distributes the pro-democracy magazine throughout China with shotgun blasts of e-mail to about 250,000 addresses compiled from commercial and public lists. The magazine has even found its way into the mailbox of the head of Shanghai’s Internet security division.

News updates go out daily, and the main edition is released about every 10 days. In most cases, recipients can get off the subscription list with an e-mail. But the editors don’t let people like government officials or police off so easily.

The newsletters are sent from a different address every day. Random delivery is an essential part of the strategy, said Feng Donghai, an editor in New York. That way, recipients can deny that they deliberately subscribed.

It’s a dangerous game of cat and mouse. Editors warn subscribers not to forward the e-mails to their friends. Distribution of “subversive” or “divisive” material can mean a life sentence in China. The creators of a similar magazine called Public Opinion that was edited and disseminated inside China have gone into hiding since a government crackdown a few months ago.

Since the Internet became publicly available in China in 1995, about 1.2 million accounts have been created, many with multiple users at universities, companies, even Internet cafes in the smallest of towns. The government expects 5 million users in 2000.

The Internet has provided access to academic and economic information, helping speed the country’s development. But it also created a common ground for activists across China. A fledgling opposition group, the China Democracy Party, used e-mail to publicize its platform, and its founders credited the Internet with helping the party grow from 12 to 200 declared members in several cities in four months.

As a result, Beijing has created special squads of Internet police to patrol cyberspace. In a Dec. 23 speech, President Jiang Zemin specifically threatened computer programmers, along with artists and writers, with stiff jail terms if they “endanger state security.” Earlier in the same week, China Democracy Party founder Wang Youcai was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion. Two of his crimes were sending e-mail to exiled Chinese dissidents in the United States and accepting overseas funds to buy a computer.

But so far, security officials have found that it’s much easier to control people than to harness the Internet. Just ask Lin Hai.

Case Creates Unlikely Allies

The 30-year-old Shanghai software entrepreneur has been branded China’s first “cyber-dissident.” He is charged with providing VIP Reference with 30,000 e-mail addresses, including those of top officials. His Dec. 4 trial was closed to the public--even his wife was prevented from attending. His lawyers argued that authorities couldn’t stop the message, so they arrested the messenger.

Lin is awaiting a verdict.

Lin’s case has created a community of unlikely allies. Hacker groups like the Cult of the Dead Cow at https://www.cultdeadcow.com have joined the American Assn. of the Advancement of Science at https://www.aaas.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation at https://www.eff.org and Human Rights in China at https://www.hrichina.org to pepper official Chinese organizations with e-mails pushing for Lin’s acquittal and leniency for Wang.

“This campaign helps the global Internet community to protect free speech around the world,” said Bobson Wong, executive director of the Digital Freedom Network, one of the action’s organizers. Some “hacktivists” outside China already have made their own judgments on the case. When a California computer science student who calls himself “Bronc Buster” read about Lin, he decided to protest. Bronc and his partner, “Zyklon,” cracked the Chinese network and defaced a government-run Web site.

“The ‘hacking’ part took less than two minutes. . . . We spent more time laughing than we did ‘hacking,’ ” Bronc Buster said in an e-mail.

It was their second assault on Chinese government Web sites. In October, the pair said they had defaced a government-sponsored Web site on human rights in China. “These sites had some of the poorest security I’ve ever seen for a system run by a powerful world government,” Bronc Buster said.

He said they came across about 20 firewall servers blocking everything from Playboy.com to Parents.com.

“They monitor everything,” he wrote. “The list of blocked sites was so large, I don’t know how [they] could check them all.”

The hackers said they instructed five of the servers to ignore the blocks and left a message inviting computer users to explore the Internet freely while they could.

“It would be extremely easy for anyone with the needed resources to totally take down the entire Internet in China,” Bronc Buster wrote.

Hacking is a crime in both China and the U.S. Bronc Buster emphasized that they simply moved files and didn’t destroy any data, which would be a more serious crime. “I guess that’s what makes this a case of ‘hacktivism’ rather than a case of ‘Internet terrorism.’ ”

Just as walls can divide and deflect, they can also create communities. In this case, they united two countercultures, bringing together a generation of hackers and political protesters who have found a new way to deliver an old anti-authoritarian message. Dissidents who have long searched for leverage against Beijing are learning how to hit the power structure in a soft spot.

While Bronc Buster and Zyklon demonstrated how vulnerable the Chinese network is, they say they are not likely to hack their way back in. “I don’t want to bring any more heat down on either of us,” Bronc wrote. “We both have normal lives we don’t want messed up.”

But for a handful of others, shooting holes in China’s information monopoly is a full-time preoccupation. They have clear strategies and objectives, and they say they have the tools they need to act.

“ ‘Hacktivism’ forges conscience with technology and girds us against the disagreeable nature of conflict,” said a hacker who identifies himself as “Oxblood Ruffin,” a former U.N. consultant who now is known as foreign minister of the Cult of the Dead Cow.

“It allows us to mount better arguments, rally unseen allies, and take on any tyranny,” he said in an e-mail. “And it shrinks any Goliath down to his true size.”

The Cult of the Dead Cow is home base to those wielding slingshots from afar. Founded in 1986, it is one of the oldest hacker crews, and was named by founders who used to hang out at a slaughterhouse. Its members have helped propel hacking from a fascination with cracking code to the fashioning of a code of ethics. They may deserve credit for coining the term “hacktivism,” and have taught the tools of the trade--as well as the consequences--to others.

One of the most resolute and elusive groups is the Hong Kong Blondes, a disciplined underground network of overseas Chinese students on at least three continents. The leader, alias “Blondie Wong,” is a dissident astrophysicist who as a child witnessed Red Guards stone his father to death during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

He was studying abroad during the 1989 Tiananmen student protests and watched the tragic denouement on television. It sparked his life as a “hacktivist.”

“When the tanks went into the square and began shooting and running over people, it was like I was a little boy again, watching my father being killed,” Wong told Ruffin in a rare interview published on the Cult of the Dead Cow Web site. “Then the Big Lie. The government’s first response was that it never happened.”

Wong’s answer was to organize an intricate web of hackers to infiltrate the government network. They claim to have temporarily disabled a Chinese communications satellite last year.

Groups Say They Have a Cyber Trojan Horse

Along with Ruffin’s group, from which they recently separated, they claim to have distributed a Trojan horse software tool that will allow them to monitor and even manipulate computer systems in China.

The tool, called “Back Orifice” in a spoof on the name of Microsoft’s Back Office software, allows system administrators to see what is being typed on remote computer screens. They say it can be sent as an e-mail attachment or piggybacked onto a file that can be downloaded from a Web site, knowingly or not.

The Computer Security Division of the Public Security Bureau in Shanghai had no comment. But sources inside the central government say authorities are so worried that they’ve halted use of e-mail until they can protect their data.

Theoretically, the Trojan horse could be used to snoop on government networks, to clear dissidents’ files or to warn political activists who are under investigation. But most important, says Ruffin, once it is on a host server, it will provide a launch pad for other tools.

“Having this application dropped onto your hard drive is like giving your PIN number, your house keys and your lover’s nude photos to a stranger, only worse,” wrote Ruffin. “My sincere wish is that the [unwitting installers] in China include legions of Communist Party officials, corrupt bureaucrats and nasty high school vice principals. I’m sure that we’ll find out soon enough.”