14 DAY TRIAL // The website of the biggest Australian film festival was defaced by Chinese hacktivists. The politically motivated hackers replaced the content with the Chinese flag and messages against Rebiya Kadeer, leader of the Uyghur ethnic group, who was invited to attend the event.
The 2009 edition of the Melbourne International Film Festival debuted on July 24 and will end on August 9. The festival's organizers invited Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uyghur Congress, to attend the screening of "Ten Conditions of Love," a documentary about her own life, created by Jeff Daniels.
The scheduling of the screening has brought a lot of criticism from the authorities in Beijing, who consider the World Uyghur Congress a terrorist organization. The Chinese government accuses Kadeer of being responsible for the recent ethnic conflicts in the province of Xinjiang between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese.
Rebiya Kadeer, who won the Rafto Prize for human rights in 2004, currently lives in exile in the U.S., after spending six years in a Chinese prison for allegedly endangering state secrets. Earlier this year, the Chinese consulate in Melbourne asked the film festival's organizers to remove "Ten Conditions of Love" from the schedule, but they refused. "Hey, we're an independent arts organisation and it's our programme!" Richard Moore, head of the Melbourne International Film Festival, commented for the BBC.
The recent defacement was not the first electronic attack against the festival's website, which has registered significant downtimes for the past ten days. "[...] We can see behind the scenes on our website that there are hundreds, well, if not thousands, of people from outside of Australia trying to get into our website and trying to damage us," Mr. Moore noted.
"We like film, but we hate Rebiya Kadeer! We like peace, and we hate East Turkistan terrorist! Please apologize to all the Chinese people! Hacked by oldjun!" some of the messages left by the Chinese hackers read. The United Nations officially recognize the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization, but Kadeer has denied its existence.
"[...] Is it likely that this attack is sponsored by the Chinese government? Hmm. I'm not so sure. Of course, they are upset that Kadeer has been invited to the film's screening in Australia – but the messages that have been left on the website have the whiff of political hacktivist about them, rather than a state-endorsed attack," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos, noted.