MANILA, Philippines — A number of Philippine-based websites have been defaced by what looks like hackers from China on Saturday, in what appears to be a response to the global protest mounted by Filipino hackers on Friday.
The defaced web pages contained the words “Hack by Chinese,” “The People’s Republic of China long live” and a whole paragraph of text set in Chinese, which tend to be gibberish and contained no coherent message when translated using Google Translate.
The deface page also brandished the Chinese flag, while an anthem played in the background.
This is the same one put up by hackers who broke into the website of Colegio San Agustin earlier in the day. ()
The affected websites include:
http://phrc.ph/
http://www.mgbcar.ph/
http://seacom-rc.org/
http://basicenergy.ph/
http://www.mcap.ph/
http://etesda.ieti.edu.ph/
http://www.lra.gov.ph/
On Friday, groups of Filipino hacktivists joined the May 11 protests set by civil society groups around the world to protest China’s aggressive claim of Scarborough Shoal or Panatag Shoal, a small landform just West of Luzon.
Instead of hacking and defacing Chinese websites just like what they did in the past weeks, the Filipino hackers targeted websites from other countries, in an effort to bring the territorial claim issue to a global stage.
“Not only to those who are surrounding the shoal. We are doing this to let you know that this is a global situation,” they said, adding that China is employing “bullying tactics” and “abuse of power” in their attempts to claim ownership of the disputed shoal.
Beijing has since condemned the protests launched by Filipinos worldwide.
