Chinese hackers prepare to defend the motherland

Fuelled by anti-Western nationalism, patriotic Chinese hackers have come to the defence of the motherland in response criticism of Beijing's handling of recent pro-independence riots by ethnic Tibetans.

The hackers are believed to be behind recent attacks on several US websites and a Chinese website run by the French supermarket chain Carrefour.

Scott Henderson, a former US Army intelligence analyst who wrote a book about Chinese hackers called The Dark Visitor, has been tracking developments on his blog and says that what's happened over the past week may be the opening salvo in new cyber war.

The hackers, he says, are working independently from the government but with its tacit support. "Once they [the hackers] get started, it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle," he said in a telephone interview. "It does seem to be escalating and it's feeding on itself."

Henderson has spotted a notice posted on one of the Chinese hacker sites warning of a planned "counter-attack" by a US-based Poizon BOx - the hacker group at the front lines during a Sino-US cyber war in 2001 sparked off by the death of a Chinese fighter pilot who was killed in a mid-air collision involving a US spy plane.

"Red Alert: Beware of the United States hacker organization Poizon B0x coming in again," the translated message reads.

Henderson admits that it's impossible to know if there really is some planned counter-attack or if this is just part of the methods used by the Chinese hackers to "ratchet up the rhetoric" and build on the recent minor successes.