Message-ID: <CACg8xYeSDkVFHVUT2OS27kwvLZ9fXJb5an_v=OXEkfds9Am+TA@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 19:24:29 +0000
From: Wei Honker <wei.honker@...il.com>
To: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: cDc Created Hong Kong Blondes and 'Hacktivism' as
	a Media Hack

cDc Created Hong Kong Blondes and 'Hacktivism' as a Media Hack

http://weihonker.tumblr.com/

Anonymous is a Lie

Anonymous is a lie. Anonymous is built on a false foundation that
casts a pale shadow over anything and everything they attempt to
accomplish. While born out of the trolls and lulz of the /b/ board on
fourchan Anonymous has quickly become an online activist movement. The
group has targeted everything from oppressive regimes in the Middle
East, to opposition about Internet censorship. They have been
launching DDoS attacks from the comfort of their basements while
people in the street are literally gunned down and then they have the
audacity to claim victory for themselves because they managed to take
a website offline for a few hours. These actions, these minor
irritations, have given Anonymous the audacity to call themselves
hacktivists, a term that is itself a lie. By using the term hackivist
or hacktivism Anonymous is helping to perpetuate one of the biggest
media hacks of all time and they don’t even know it.

Pulling pranks on the media has a long history with the computer
underground. One of the best examples is the entire movie “Hackers”
which is so full of inside jokes they cease to be funny. Although when
you examine the list of technical consultants the lack of humor makes
sense. Hackers, the movie, is such a huge media hack the plot is used
not once, but twice. The second time with Serena Achtul and the ‘True
Life” show on MTV. The show supposedly illustrates a so called
‘hacker’ who convinces Serena to follow him around while he attempts
to retrieve a disk before the feds do, which is exactly the same plot
used in the movie ‘Hackers”. Even after Serena and MTV where told they
were being trolled they chose to air the footage anyway.

I don’t know who from the computer underground was the first to
execute a media hack but some of the best have come from the Cult of
the Dead Cow. To give you an idea of just how prolific and proficient
the cDc is at hacking the media consider that their slogan is ‘World
Domination through Media Saturation’. This is nowhere more apparent
than the spectacle that was the BO2K release during Defcon in 1999. No
software launch in recorded history; including those done by the media
savvy Apple Inc., could touch this. Everything from smashing guitars
to furry assless chaps to bad rap music with all the cDc members
prancing around on stage as if it was the second coming. All that
spectacle for nothing more than a remote access tool, something with
almost the exact same feature set as PC Anywhere except that it runs
on a different port number. Even Microsoft themselves said that BO2K
wasn’t a threat but the press ate it up anyway and cDc proved again
that they were in fact master media manipulators.

Hactivism is another brainchild of cDc designed to fool and trick the
media and all who choose to be associated with the term. The creation
of the term is supposedly well documented as being first used by cDc
member Omega in an IRC chat room in 1996. But close examination of the
hacktivism Wikipedia page and that page’s history shows a second
possible source for the term, that of techno-culture writer Jason Sack
in a piece about media artist Shu Lea Cheang, published in InfoNation
in 1995 which pre-dates cDc’s claim to the term. This co-option of the
term itself is part of cDc’s plan to execute the biggest media hack of
all time encompassing all of ‘hacktivism’.

But co-opting the term itself is not enough. cDc felt they needed
something to take advantage of the term and to plunge it fully into
the media spotlight. They came up with a fictitious international
hacking group, a group who would only attack corporations that did not
support human rights, and so the Hong Kong Blondes were born.

Reading the initial interview between the supposed Hong Kong Blondes
leader ‘Blondie Wong’ and the cDc member ‘Oxblood Ruffin’ in cDc #356
now, fourteen years later, makes the entire ruse plainly obvious. Arik
Hesseldahl, who ran the initial story in Wired based solely on this
interview, with absolutely no corroborating evidence in the first
place, has since privately expressed his doubts about the story. By
publishing this article he unwittingly became the first rube in a long
line of media rubes that the cDc played with ever increasing
dexterity. Hesseldahl has most likely not publicly expanded on his
misgivings over the story as it would draw attention to his original
reservations and expose the fact that he failed to verify even one
fact in the article.

The first thing that jumps out at me from the initial interview is
that it was conducted by cDc member Oxblood Ruffin and published
directly by him. No one else was present and no one else spoke to
Blondie Wong and so no one can confirm the interview ever took place.
Which brings me to the second red flag, the use of the handles
‘Blondie Wong’ and ‘Lemon Li’. Are these hacker handles supposed to be
taken as legitimate or where they made up in an IRC chat room among
half drunk and half high cDc members laughing themselves onto the
floor? I won’t even mention the part of Blondie traveling with armed
guards, seriously, Hollywood would have a hard time topping this.

Next lets look at the claims that Blondie Wong and the Hong Kong
Blondes supposedly temporarily disabled a Chinese communications
satellite. China only had three official satellites at the time. Of
course there is no confirmation of this claim from anyone either, not
the Chinese, who probably would have pointed the finger at the US if
it were true, or anyone else. But there is no mention anywhere of any
Chinese satellite anomalies of any sort. Considering the large number
of claims over the years of hackers attacking satellites, all of which
have been proven to be false, it is highly unlikely that the HKBs
succeeded where everyone else has failed.

Then just as quickly as it began it was over. Within six month cDc
officially cut ties with the Hong Kong Blondes and bid them ado.
Oxblood wrote a tear-stained letter to his best buddy Blondie Wong in
cDc #361 and the group formally cut ties with a press release in
December, a press release signed by the cDc ‘Minister of Propaganda’
and asking for all movie deals to be forwarded to him. But if the hack
was going so well, with the media now using earlier uncorroborated
stories to corroborate the current stories, why stop now? Why not
build a massive Hong Kong Blonde media empire? Why? Because the
Chinese government was starting to actually believe the bovine
excrement the cDc was shoveling.

Some of the members of the cDc received visits from associates of the
Chinese diplomatic core at their homes, and by Diplomatic core I mean
the Ministry of State Security for the People’s Republic of China.
Having men in suits show up on your doorstep, regardless of which
country they are from, was seen by members of cDc as taking a simple
media hack a little too far. And so, just as quickly as the HKBs
began, they disappeared, never to be heard from again, except in the
echo’s of Oxblood Ruffin as he pontificates about the origins of
hacktivism.

Hacktivists and Hactivism pretty much went away after that. Sure it
was around here and there but very few DDoS attacks and website
defacements contained any sort of political or activist message. Those
that did where mostly attributed to angry teenagers and not to
activist organizations practicing hacktivism. That is until Anonymous
came along. Anonymous quickly graduated from the trolling and the lulz
that was /b/ and needed something to latch onto out in the real
Internet, something to give their actions legitimacy, to draw in new
members, and to evoke sympathy from the general population. The irony
of all ironies is that the media gave Anonymous what they needed by
labeling the leaderless collective as hacktivists.

Of course once Anonymous had something they thought was legitimate
they ran with it, waving the hactivism banner far and wide.
Unfortunately, the whole thing is a lie, a media hack perpetrated by
the ultimate masters of the lulz, cDc. A hack so lulzy and so
pervasive it is still being laughed about by cDc members today.
Anonymous unfortunately is oblivious to the fact that that they are
just one more piece in the most epic media hack of all time, a media
hack that has existed for over a decade and is now responsible for
labeling an entire movement. Unfortunately, it’s no longer a joke and
it’s no longer funny. It is time for Oxblood and the rest of the cDc
to own up to their shenanigans and set the record straight.

If Anonymous truly wants to make a difference they need to evolve
beyond the simple DDoS attacks, web defacements and the media hack
that currently defines hacktivsm and become the movement they want to
be.

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