The Hong Kong Danger Duo is a
hacker group with a flair for comedic antics. The group claims that it is not
elite, calling themselves “
script kiddies,” but they gained a significant amount of notoriety on May 10, 1999. On that day, along with another hacker group called “
Global Hell”(
gH), the Hong Kong Danger Duo briefly hacked the
White House’s
website. Once the two groups had hacked into the White House web site, they defaced it and replaced the original content with their own. The hack only lasted a short time because the White House uses
crontab to refresh the content from a secure
server. This is a recommended method to use in order to avoid attackers from defacing web sites as it refreshes the site every few minutes. Despite the quick recovery, the hack did cause enough of a disruption that the White House completely closed down its website for three days.
The attacks came at a time when several other government agencies found that their sites were also being attacked. Many of the attackers claimed to be retaliating in response to
the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Most experts, however, believe that the hackers were motivated simply by the desire to gain attention and fame, attacking sites simply because they could.
Some of the text that was left on the White House page by the
HHDD and
gH was:
“Why did we hack this domain? Simple, we fucking could. Maybe this will teach the world a fucking lesson. Stop all the war. Consintrate on your own problems. Nothing was damaged, but we not telling how we got in. Fear the end of the world is upon us, in a few short months it will all be over. Y2K is coming.”
The opportunity to make the White House Web break-in actually appeared quite unexpectedly for the hacker groups. Members of gH simply caught the White House
system administrator transferring
log files in an insecure manner via an unsecured
FTP site.
The Hong Kong Danger Duo derived its name from a hilarious(in my opinion)
Upright Citizens Brigade sketch. The UCB’s Hong Kong Danger Duo was a stereotypically cartoonish Asian gang of “extreme” performers with colorfully
hodge-podge costumes. The extreme acts performed by the group consisted of running with scissors, putting on a baby sized T-shirt, and having a cold popsicle put down the back of a member’s costume. During their act, they frequently shout out their catchphrase, “
You can’t escape the danger!” Another thing that makes the “duo” so dangerous is that there are three of them when there should be two.
The Hong Kong Danger Duo roster at the time of the White House hack was:
Kung-P00, SpecialK, B0y wund3r, Jamaican J1m, Butt3ry L0bster M4n, and Phel0n