Honker Union

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Honker (simplified Chinese: 红客; traditional Chinese: 紅客; pinyin: hóngkè) is a group known for hacktivism, mainly present in Mainland China. Literally the name means "Red Guest", as compared to the usual Chinese transliteration of hacker (黑客, hēikè, literally Black Guest as in black hat).

The word "Honker" emerged after May 1999, when the United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and since then, Honkers formed a Honker Union, whose members combined hacking skills with patriotism and nationalism, and launched a series of attacks on websites in the United States, mostly government-related sites.

The name also suggests that a hacker in red, the color of the Communist party, is in combat with hackers in the dark. In the following years, Honkers remained active in hactivism supporting the Chinese government against the so-called imperialism of the United States and the supposed militarism of Japan.

[edit] Media coverage

While Honker Union is not directly related to Hong Kong, the fact that Honker can also mean Hongkongers has caused some confusion in the media. In January 2003, the "worm" SQL Slammer appeared in the Internet. As proof of concept exploit code for the SQL Server bug utilised by SQL Slammer, written by David Litchfield, was found in the Honker Union website, it was speculated that the worm was spread by Honker Union. The Associated Press misstated that Honker might be a Hong Kong hacking group, possibly due to aforementioned naming confusion. Though it was a mistake, Honker Union since then has been falsely connected to Hong Kong in many other documents.

[edit] Attacks by Honker Union

[edit] Tsering Woeser

In May 2008, the Tibetan writer/blogger and political dissident Tsering Woeser, was reported to be under cyber-attack through her Skype and email accounts being impersonated, also her website hacked. This attack was claimed by Honker Union. ^{[1] [2]}