Hacking for Human Rights?http://web.archive.org/web/20000824051110/www.wired.com/news/...1 of 21/13/07 7:38 PM

Hacking for Human Rights?

byArik Hesseldahl

9:15 a.m. Jul. 14, 1998 PDT

The reclusive leader of a Chinese hacking group that last year claimed to have temporarily disabled a Chinesesatellite is now forming a new global hacking organization to protest Western investment in the country.In aninterviewwith the Boston-based hacking collective, theCult of the Dead Cow, the hacker, who calls himself Blondie Wong, said the new group is forming in the US, Canada, and in Europe to take up the causeof fighting human rights abuses in China.Wong, a dissident astrophysicist living in Toronto, said that the new group -- known as the Yellow Pages --plans to target companies doing business with China, and possibly attack their computer networks."Many of these companies have computer networks and there are a lot of members in the Yellow Pages whohave excellent hacking skills," Wong said.The interview was conducted by a former United Nations consultant known only as Oxblood Ruffin. Thegroup provided Wired News with an advance copy of the interview.In the interview, Wong seemed unconcerned about any damage or monetary losses that might result from anetwork attack carried out by the Yellow Pages."Human rights is an international issue, so I don't have a problem with businesses that profit from oursuffering paying part of the bill," he told Oxblood.As leader of the Hong Kong Blondes hacking group, Wong has the credentials to back up his threats. Withmembers operating inside and outside of China, the Hong Kong Blondes claim to have found significantsecurity holes within Chinese government computer networks, particularly systems related to satellitecommunications.The group claims it first announced itself to the government in Beijing last year by temporarily disabling aChinese communications satellite -- an incident never confirmed by the Chinese government.Since then, the group has threatened to cripple certain Chinese military and security networks if humanrights issues in China reach what they decide is a critical point.Members of the Cult of the Dead Cow said that the organization began advising the Blondes on strongencryption and network intrusion at the annual "Beyond Hope" hacker conference held in New York lastAugust.In the interview, Wong details how he saw his father stoned to death by members of the Chinese Red Guardduring the Cultural Revolution, the period of political chaos that engulfed China during the 1960s and '70s.Later, as a student attending an unspecified university in the Great Britain where he was studying tobecome a teacher, Wong describes watching televised images of the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square."When the tanks went into the square and began shooting and running over people, it was like I was a littleboy again, watching my father being killed," he told Oxblood.Wong claimed that the Hong Kong Blondes has doubled in size, with 42 active members operating in Chinaand other countries. Many of the group's newest members are Chinese government employees, whom Wongdescribes as "technical people."One member, a female hacker known as Lemon Li, was detained earlier this year and has since been movedto Paris with the help of a group Blondie described only as "a group of people even more outside the law thanwe are." The same group provides Wong with an armed escort wherever he goes.The interviewer, Oxblood, said he knows little about the origin or membership of the Yellow Pages, other than