Chinese crackers have apparently got an early start on what the US government and security companies are predicting will be a wave of attacks against Amercian Web sites this week.
The Department of Energy's site was defaced and bore several anti-US messages, according to Vigilinx, a security vendor. Several other government sites, including the Department of Labor, have also apparently been defaced.
Among the messages left on the Energy site were: "The Great Chinese Nation Hooray!!!!," "USA Will Be With Responsibility for the Accident Total!!!" and "Protest USA sell Weapon to Taiwan Break World Peace!!!"
As previously reported, the National Infrastructure Protection Centre last week issued a warning urging network administrators to be alert for organised attacks coming from Chinese crackers over the next few days, which include several dates of particular importance to the Chinese.
Tuesday is May Day, the biggest holiday on the communist calendar; May 4 is Youth Day; and May 7 is the anniversary of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
The warning comes on the heels of the recent incident involving a US surveillance plane in which the pilot of a Chinese fighter jet was killed. The crew of the US plane was subsequently held in China for more than a week before being released.
Data compiled by Internet Security Systems shows that attacks originating from Chinese domains against US sites increased seven-fold during the height of the crisis in China in the first week of April.
"This kind of hacktivism is low-level stuff, but the concern is what's going to happen next week," said Chris Rouland, director of the X Force research team at ISS. "We haven't seen any mystery payloads yet from China, but defacements are usually a good bellweather of other activity, so it could be out there."
However, the attacks have apparently been going both ways. There have been 32 defacements of Internet sites with Chinese domain names since last Monday and dozens more since the beginning of April, according to statistics posted on the Attrition.org Web site.
Some of the defaced sites include China Telecom (which was hit three times), the China Nuclear Information Centre and eToys China. There is no way to know for sure where the attacks originated, but many of the crews who claimed responsibility for the defacements are based in the US and the messages left on the sites are typically pro-US and/or anti-China.
