Date: Fri, 04 May 2012 03:30:46 -0500
From: Laurelai <laurelai@...echan.org>
To: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: cDc Created Hong Kong Blondes and
 'Hacktivism' as a Media Hack

On 5/3/12 2:24 PM, Wei Honker wrote:
> 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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tl;dr

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