Hackers protest embassy bombing

ZDNN, US ZDNet US

Published: 10 May 1999 07:56 BST

Hackers struck the Web site of the U.S. Department of the Interior (this link may be unavailable due to the incident), replacing the graphics on its home page with photos of three of the Chinese nationals who were apparently killed in the errant bombing, as well a photo of protesters carrying a banner with the words "U.S. Killer" on it.

According to a report by ABCnews.com, hackers altered the official Web site of the U.S. embassy in China Saturday, then struck the sites of the departments of Energy and the Interior on Sunday.

The Energy Department site read "Protest USA's Nazi action," abcnews.com said. As of late Sunday evening, its home page appeared to be down. Meanwhile, hackers also created their own Web site at killusa.abc.yesite.com/, which carried hundreds of messages of protest as well as entries calling for an organised effort to hack other sites, including NATO's.

One message encouraged attempts to bring NATO's e-mail server down and solicited information on bugs in the Solaris operating system on which the message said the server runs. ABCnews.com also reported an attempt to attack the official White House site. It also cited several messages on Chinese Web sites and message boards in China claiming that Chinese protesters were responsible for the actions.