By George Norman - Software News Editor
Added on 29 Jul 2009(545 Views)




The official web page of the Melbourne Film Festival, the biggest film festival in Australia, has been recently hacked into and the content on said webpage has been replaced with an image of the Chinese flag and some anti-Kadeer slogans. It seems that Chinese hackers are behind the attack and it also seems that a documentary about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer is the reason why the attack was launched in the first place.

The Chinese hackers that defaced the Melbourne Film Festival website posted the following message: “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!”


The Chinese Government, who blames the exiled Uighur leader for having enticed ethnic unrest in Xinjiang, has asked the festival’s organizers to withdraw the film about Rebiya Kadeer, but were turned down. According to Festival Director Richard Moore, abusive emails poured in when news that the festival will not comply with the Chinese Government’s requests broke out.

The documentary in question is called “Ten Conditions of Love”, is the product of Australian documentary-maker Jeff Daniels, and will be screened on the 8th of August. Rebiya Kadeer has been invited and will presumably attend the screening.

According to Senior Technology Consultant with Sophos, Graham Cluley, the attack could have been a lot worse. “In my view, movie-lovers should be breathing a sigh of relief. Political graffiti defacing a website may be against the law, but it's a lot better than hackers planting malicious code on your website designed to steal money or absorb your computer into a botnet. It might be wise for the owners of the festival website to count their lucky stars that the attack wasn't more serious, and take measures now to prevent further (and potentially more serious) security breaches in the future,” he said.





Don't forget to:

RSS


Tags: Hacker, China, Australia, Melbourne, Film festival, Security

Link to this article:



Add comment:
Name(Required)
Email(Required - Never shown)
Website(Optional)
Comment(Required):

Insert the following code:
Software News
XP Mode Sheds Hardware Virtualization Requirement
XP Mode is a feature meant the small business users, feature that is integrated in Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate. What XP Mode does is create a virtual Windows XP ...
22 Mar 2010
Update on Critical Firefox 3.6 Vulnerability Uncovered by Russian Researcher
Late this February we were reporting that Firefox 3.6, the latest and greatest version in the Firefox range, is plagued by a critical security vulnerability. The vulnerability in question was discovered by ...
22 Mar 2010
Microsoft Updates Its Bing App for the iPhone
Microsoft and Apple are, as we all know, longtime rivals. But with a lot of people using Apple’s iPhone mobile device (including some 10% of Microsoft’s own employees), the Redmond-based software giant could not pass up...
22 Mar 2010
Rumor Mill: Google to Shut Down Chinese Search Engine this April
It would seem there is no way the Chinese authorities will allow Google to stop censoring search results on Google.cn, the Chinese version of Google Search. So Google will do just what it said it ...
22 Mar 2010
PayPal 2.0 iPhone App with Bump Capabilities
PayPal, the company that boasts about providing a “faster, safer way to send money, make an online payment, receive money or set up a merchant account” has released version 2.0 of its iPhone application...
19 Mar 2010
Bad Hacking Ideas: Disgruntled Employee Disables More than 100 Cars
Losing your job is hard – doubly so in these harsh times. But taking it out on your former employer is not the appropriate course of action. Going out for a cold one with your friends, who will offer you...
19 Mar 2010
Recommended Tools
Top Downloads