Anonymous 'defaces' Chinese websites

2012-04-05 22:41

Beijing - The hacking group Anonymous has claimed it has hacked 300 Chinese websites in recent days, including government and commercial sites, in protest at web censorship in the country.

According to messages posted on the group's Twitter account this week, the latest of which was on Thursday, Anonymous said it had defaced the sites with comments in English and Chinese.

Some of the messages were directed at the Chinese people while others addressed the government.

One read: "To the Chinese people: your government controls the internet in your country and tries to filter what he sees as a threat to him."

Another said: "Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall."

A list of the websites hacked was published on pastebin.com. However a number of the sites appeared to be running normally late on Thursday.

In March the Chinese government announced tighter control of the Internet in the country, arresting more than 1 000 users and deleting at least 200 000 messages it said were harmful.

Operators of more than 3 000 websites have also received warnings, while restrictions were recently imposed for three days on the use of microblogging sites, of which more than 300 million users have accounts for.

- AFP