Islamic State hackers ‘target top Chinese university’

A leading Chinese university has had its website hacked by supporters of Islamic State, according to reports.

Tsinghua University’s website displayed an image of IS fighters riding horses and audio in support of holy war, according to the South China Morning Post.

Underneath the image was a message that said: “Everything is OK in the end. If it’s not OK, then it’s not the end”, signed by “Islamic State Hacker”.

According to the SCMP, a member of staff at the university’s computer management centre confirmed that the hacking had taken place.

However, the university’s home page and other parts of its website were unaffected.

Citing Chinese newspaper the Legal Evening News, the SCMP reported that a technician at the university said it was unlikely that the hackers had broken Tsinghua’s firewall.

Instead, the website might have used a weak password allowing the hackers in, it said.

Last November, IS executed a Chinese hostage in Syria, triggering a promise from Beijing that it would hold the killers accountable.

This is not the first time Tsinghua has been embarrassed by a hack of its website. In 2008, its website carried a spoof interview with president Binglin Gu, saying that the Chinese university system was “pouring shit into the students’ minds”.

In what was seen as a protest by hackers against turgid higher education in China, the interview went on to lambast “serious academic corruption, dry and irrelevant to society curriculum, and rote memorisation teaching methods”. 

david.matthews@tesglobal.com