The attacks began with the recent mid-air collision in Chinese air space between a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet which killed the Chinese fighter pilot. Last week, Bush promised to defend Taiwan against Chinese attack. It is likely that on-line cracking activity will escalate with yesterday’s announcement by the Bush concerning the so-called Star Wars 2 project in which he described the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, which limits missile defence systems, as a thing of the past and made reference to threats from rogue states.
Chinese crackers are claiming hundreds of successful attacks against US targets, including defacing the Department of Energy’s web site with the message “USA Will Be With Responsibility for the Accident Total!!!”. They also claim a denial of service attack (where a server is flooded with false and untraceable requests, ultimately crashing it) against the US House of Representatives’ e-mail servers. The Chinese Xinhua News Agency has also reported that US crackers have defaced the web sites of provincial governments.
The correct terminology for hackers and crackers is a raw nerve for many programmers. Most say that a cracker is someone who breaks into someone else's computer system, while a hacker is simply a skilled programmer. The terms are commonly used incorrectly.