U.S.-China Battle of ‘Hacktivism’ Escalates

Chinese and U.S. hackers escalated their cyber-war Tuesday, in a rising battle of online mischief triggered by the recent collision between a Chinese military jet and a U.S. surveillance plane.

Scores of Web sites were defaced this week by Chinese hackers and their U.S. counterparts.

In most cases, the home Web pages of affected U.S. sites were replaced with anti-American propaganda and images of the Chinese pilot downed in the incident with the U.S. plane. American hackers in turn substituted anti-Chinese diatribes and taunts on Chinese sites’ home pages.

The cyber-war appears to be the first effort by American hackers to battle counterparts in another nation over a political conflict. In general, Web site defacements by U.S.-based attackers have been an effort to demonstrate their technological skills at disrupting sites.

“Never before have countries been in the situation where their own ‘patriotic’ citizens have had the ability to launch attacks on their own initiative,” said Ben Venzke, a cyber-terrorism expert with IntelCenter.com, a site that tracks terrorism incidents and hacking wars.

“Very few people have had an ICBM [missile] in their living room . . . but now from the comfort of their easy chair at home they have the ability to launch a wide range of attacks that have the potential to cause a significant amount of damage,” Venzke said.

Among the U.S. government sites temporarily disabled Monday were those maintained by the Treasury Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A range of Chinese government sites also were hit.

The precise number of Web sites hacked is not known. Affected sites usually correct the problems within hours or even minutes--sometimes before hacking monitors have even been alerted.

Both commercial and government sites were targeted on both sides of the Pacific. Chinese hackers left a message on the site of Online Engineering Services Inc. in Bothell, Wash.: “This Web site was hacked by ChinaEagle for beating down all the hegemonism of USA.”

Several previous conflicts in the real world have spurred cyberspace battles:

Palestinian and Israeli hackers disabled hundreds of enemy sites in a battle that started last year. And Indian and Pakistani antagonists fighting over the disputed Kashmir region have waged a long-running Web-defacement war, as have the revolutionary Tamil Tigers and the government of Sri Lanka.

Chinese hackers have similarly attacked Taiwanese and Japanese sites during international disputes.

In the most recent episode, however, the virtual war appears to have been provoked by the Chinese hackers.

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned of impending attacks after widely publicized threats by Chinese hackers that were posted in Internet chat rooms.

The FBI said attacks would be mounted throughout this week. The American hackers appeared to take up the challenge; as many as several hundred sites may have been hit so far, according to those who monitor hacking on the Internet.

Experts called the attacks mischief rather than efforts to destroy computer systems or steal data.

“It’s not what people have been calling ‘cyber-war’ or ‘cyber-terrorism,’ ” said Amit Yoran, president of the security firm RipTech. “It’s ‘hacktivism’--trying to get some public attention and outcry.”

Yoran said his company’s monitoring system shows the Chinese efforts involved standard hacking methods and tools that require little sophistication, and whose damage can be quickly undone.

A move to more destructive techniques could change the equation, Venzke said.

If such attacks cause serious damage, international tensions could rise. Governments could face the difficult prospect of figuring out how to rein in their own hacker vigilantes or risk uncontrollable escalation.