While You Were Sweeping: Holiday Hacking and Comments

Beijing may have quieted down a bit over the Tomb-Sweeping Festival – except for the jam-packed tourist locations – but the Chinese web didn’t at all. Anonymous left their mark on government sites even as Weibo comments came back early in the week.

The hacker group Anonymous is notorious for their takeover of sites including the FBI, Department of Justice and the government portals of numerous countries. They turned their attention to China (for only the second time) and took down close to 500 sites, including various government, media and business sites. A Wall Street Journal article points out that this attack may ultimately have fizzled a bit in China due to the lack of Chinese language in their message and the fact that none of the hundreds of websites were particularly high-ranking.

On the positive side for the Chinese Internet, Weibo users were able to comment on posts once again; the function had been disabled for a few days after rumors of a coup. Netizens had plenty to say with comments that ranged from “Today I can speak again. The weather’s gotten better. My mood is even again!” to “Fail to respect the people and the people reject you.”

Now that Weibo is fully functional, have a look at the Beijinger’s page and add your own comments to our posts, simply because you can.

Photo: blogs.ft.com, blogs.wsj.com