Peking University Website Hacked
At around 11pm on Friday night, Peking University’s website was hacked and an article, purporting to be authored by the president of the university, Xu Zhihong, was added to the site. The article was a well-written attack on China's education system entitled something like “University Education at the crossroads: Rethink or continue to corrupt?” 《北大校长许智宏———大学教育，反思还是腐烂？》. It called for structural reform of China’s higher education system and specifically pointed out the need for the strengthening of moral education and for getting rid of incompetent professors who leached on the university system.
The bogus article only appeared on the site for about 10 minutes before being taken down. Despite the brevity of its time on the site, news of the hack spread quicker than a viral Youku video. Yesterday, Peking University’s news center posted a statement (see image above), admitting that they had suffered a malicious attack and that an article pretending to by the university’s president has been posted to the site. The notice goes on to say that the university “strongly resents and vehemently condemns this provocation.” Beida’s IT department are currently attempting to track the source of the security breach.
This is the second time in the past month that the site of one of China’s top universities has been hacked. In late August a similar article, that also masqueraded as being authored by a school president (though with more colorful language - it claimed that China’s university system was pouring shit into students’ minds), was posted on the Tsinghua University website. Whatever the merit of the hacker’s criticisms of the Chinese tertiary education system, that the websites of China’s most famous universities could both be hacked in the space of a month, indicates there must at least be a problem with their IT departments.
Links and Sources
Peking University: 北京大学新闻中心声明 (notice about the attack)
ChinaSMACK: China Universities: Pouring Shit Into Students’ Minds
People.com.cn: 图：北大网站现假冒许智宏校长文章 (screen shot of earlier hack on Qinghua site)
hc360.com: 黑客冒充北大校长猛烈抨击教育制度(图) image