Hong Kong News Site Hacked
October 2002
HONG KONG (AP) -- Mainland Chinese who went online one day in early October of this year to read a Hong Kong newspaper were redirected by hackers to a Web site full of Falun Gong messages, a newspaper spokesman said.Several mainland readers of Ming Pao newspaper's online edition complained about being sent to the Web site run by the Falun Gong meditation sect, which is outlawed in mainland China as an "evil cult."
Kevin Lau, Chief Operating Officer of www.MingPao.com, said the newspaper alerted mainland authorities to the hacking, which targeted servers in China, but the problem was not immediately solved.
Ming Pao published an online story about the incident and said it suspected Falun Gong was responsible.
Beijing is trying to eradicate Falun Gong in the mainland, and authorities recently jailed 15 people who were convicted of breaking into a cable television system to air Falun Gong videos in two northeastern cities.
Beijing claims that throughout September of this year Falun Gong supporters in Taiwan regularly hacked into Sinosat -- a satellite system covering the entire country -- replacing government-run programs with images protesting China's three-year crackdown on the group.
Lau said that users of the Ming Pao Web site in Hong Kong and in foreign countries were not being redirected to the Falun Gong site.
He added that he knew of at least two other Hong Kong media organizations that encountered the same situation.
A Hong Kong-based spokesman for Falun Gong said the group was not responsible for the hacking.
"Just because the users are redirected to the Falun Gong Web site doesn't mean Falun Gong did it," Kan Hung-cheung said.
Although Falun Gong is illegal in mainland China, its followers are free to practice in Hong Kong, which enjoys Western-style civil liberties unheard of on the mainland.
Source...
