TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Hacker group Anonymous hacked into two U.N. websites and created pages that support Taiwan to protest Google's inactive account policy and Russia's threat of using nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
An Anonymous representative who goes by the Reddit handle "HaileeSteinfeldFan" informed Taiwan News the group hacked into the U.N.'s High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) and the U.N. Academy (LMS pilot) websites on July 12. The defacements include three pages and six downloadable files and, as of publication, still remain up.
Tsai (center). (Anonymous photo)
The homepage (archive) for the hack is a mobile app challenge created for the HLPF. At the bottom of the page is an activity section where they uploaded sx downloadable files, which included a PDF (archive) that said, "Anonymous is using this occasion to criticize Google's decision to destroy history by deleting inactive accounts, perhaps to the strongest possible extent!"
Also among the downloadable files were a Taiwanese flag, the flag of the fictional "Belgorod People's Republic," a photo of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), a text file that disputes space exploration claims by the Soviet Union, and a PDF version of a paper titled "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust," by Jan Grabowski and Shira Klein.
Fictional banner of "Belgorod People's Republic." (Anonymous image)
In addition, the collective created two defaced pages on the U.N. Academy website. One page includes the slogan "Taiwan Numbah Wan!" and Mandarin lyrics for Taiwan's national anthem.
It also displays a black and white pixilated version of Taiwan's national flag. The second page is titled "Ace card" and the collective claims that amid Russia's deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus, Anonymous has the "ultimate ace card," without revealing what it is other than to say that it is a "trick rather than a treat."
Closer view of U.N. Academy page. (Anonymous screenshot)
The representative told Taiwan News that the purpose of the defacements was to protest against "Google's harsh inactive account policy" and to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin against using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine or jeopardizing the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
