TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Decentralized international hacktivist group Anonymous on Sunday (Aug. 21) hacked into the website of a Chinese real estate agency to get revenge for a cyberattack on National Taiwan University (NTU) earlier in the month.
As part of a larger pattern of cyberattacks launched by China on Taiwanese websites after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Peloci visited Taiwan, the websites of NTU’s Office of Academic Affairs and Office of Research and Development were hacked on Aug. 7. After the hack, the homepages of these websites suddenly displayed a red and gold graphic which had Chinese characters scrawled in simplified characters that read, "There is only one China in the world."
Two weeks later on Sunday, Anonymous hacked into the website of the Fuding Real Estate Agency (福鼎市逢緣房產中介所) in Fujian Province's Fuding City, according to Anonymous representative "Allez-opi_omi." The collective uploaded an html page that included the words "Taiwan Numbah Wan," Taiwan's national flag and emblem, and a message stating that the hack was revenge for the cyberattacks on Taiwan's most prestigious university.
At the time of publication, the defacement along with the website have been taken offline. However, Anonymous has saved an archived version on Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
The first image that appears is the Anonymous logo, followed by the "Taiwan Numbah Wan!" meme. This was a reference to a quote uttered by video game streamer AngryPug in 2015 to antagonize Chinese streamer Em0 during a match in the game H1Z1.
Below the slogan was Taiwan's national flag followed by its national emblem. The collective then explained the defacement had been carried out as retaliation for the cyberattacks against NTU.
The hacktivists next included links to vandalism of three Russian websites. Anonymous then emphasized that because Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had ejected from his capsule before it landed, he does not qualify as the first man in space.
The authors of the hack pointed out that Section 8, paragraph 2.15, item b of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) sporting code originally stipulated that a flight is deemed to be uncompleted if "any member of the crew definitively leaves the spacecraft during flight."
They asserted that because other Vostok spaceflights followed this practice, America's Alan Shepard and John Glenn, who were both inside their capsules when they splashed down, should be considered the first humans in space.
There is some controversy surrounding Gagarin's record, as the Soviets did not initially admit that he had left his capsule before landing, according to the book "Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture." The FAI reworked its guidelines by emphasizing the launch, orbiting, and safe return of the human over the method in which the landing took place to enable the Gagarin to receive the record for the first person in space, wrote the The National Air and Space Museum.
Some links in the defaced page may contain embedded document files, if one is concerned about potential security risks please exercise caution.
