Round 2 of Anonymous hack of China site shows Taiwan emblem, 'Tank Man'

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The decentralized international hacktivist group Anonymous early on Friday (Oct. 1) posted the second round of its defacement of a Chinese government tourism promotion website, including Taiwan's national emblem, "Tank Man," and Winnie the Pooh.

On Thursday (Sept. 30), Reddit user "Allez-opi_omi," uploaded links to 10 pages Anonymous created on a website for the China Cultural Center. Early Friday morning at 12:01 a.m., the Anonymous representative posted "Round 2" with eight more links to content dumped onto the Chinese government platform.

According to Allez-opi_omi, the pages have been uploaded to a backend server with the URL ccc.cice.org.cn. Anonymous told Taiwan News that it exploited exposed default password credentials to hack the server and upload the rogue files.

The top five links to the new mischievous content are labeled "Tiananmen." The first link reveals the iconic Tank Man photo taken during the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

The second link shows the photo with text that reads "When you just started a game and you're trying to figure out how strong your character is." The following three links open up to recreations of the photo in various video games.

The original iconic photo of Tank Man was taken a day after the massacre when an unidentified Chinese man stood in front of a column of tanks to block them from proceeding on Chang'an Avenue on the north edge of Tiananmen Square. As the tanks were departing the square after shots were heard, the man suddenly walked in front of the lead tank, causing the driver to stop the vehicle. Like all images of the massacre, the photo is strictly banned in China.

The sixth link is simply titled "POOH" and shows scenes of Winnie the Pooh frolicking with his friends Piglet, Tigger, and Eeyore. The anthropomorphic teddy bear is banned in China, as he has been used to mock CCP Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) due to the portly dictator's resemblance to the "tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff."

The seventh image surreptitiously uploaded to the government site is a full-screen image of Taiwan's national emblem, known as the "Blue Sky with a White Sun" (青天白日旗). It was adopted in 1928 and can be found in the national flag, naval jack of the Taiwan Navy, and is the model for the highly similar Kuomintang emblem.

Lastly, the hackers included a plain, white page titled "BONUS - Throwback Thursday: Anonymous 2020 Christmas Gift!" which includes two links to hacked pages of the Football Federation of the Astrakhan region. Inside the links are images of Russian dissidents, more Taiwan symbols, Milk Tea Alliance memes, and other symbols of defiance against autocratic regimes.

Anonymous told Taiwan News that it had neglected to include one final statement in the hack: "The Internet Hate Machine hates fascists and rapists!"