China’s Green Army: Capitalism Defeats China’s First Hacking Group
What follows is a tale of the nationalist yet rebellious collective of Chinese hackers that discovered that nationalism began their tale, but capitalism would continue it.
Infighting plagues many hacker groups. I wrote a blog on Steemit a while back about infighting in the Anonymous collective (which I’ll have imported by the time this blog hits the front page) and I explained that as the group grew, certain personalities within the group tried to hijack the purpose of the group for their own gain.
This group dynamic isn’t exclusively reserved for headless hacktivist groups. During the inception of Chinese hacker culture, when the nationalist movement was in full swing, these problems began to manifest. One of the OGs in the Chinese hacker realm, China’s Green Army, fell to an even more common aspect of human nature.
Greed.
The Green Army (绿盟) formed the early soil that the China Honker Union (中国红客) grew out of, basically serving as the Genesis of Chinese hacker culture and nationalist hacker movements. Green Army grew to a membership of over 3,000 members, lead by hacker Goodwill/Goodwell, and was battle-hardened in the fires of the Jakarta Riots of 1999. Goodwell’s Green Army, with the formation of the Chinese Red Hacker Alliance, attacked Taiwan in response to the country’s “Two-State’s-Theory” representing a separate Republic of China (Taiwan) and People’s Republic of China (PRC — Mainland China). They reacted, as part of the RHA, to the denial of the Nanjing Massacre by rifling attacks at their Japanese neighbors.
Shortly thereafter, the Green Army, at the peak of its activity and during a time of great turbulence for the Chinese hacker realm, the Green Army met its demise, in the form of a venture capitalist in Shanghai. In 1999, the Green Army hosted the first known for-profit security conference in an internet cafe in Shanghai, China, a move made at the behest of one Shen Jiye, the Beijinger venture capitalist who was introduced to the group by one of its head members.
Afterwards began the split. While most of the Chinese hacker realm reacted to the Taiwanese election in 2000, the Green Army began the process of breaking in two along lines both financial and philosophical. Some reports by members within the group point to a difference in philosophy between the Shanghai crew, headed by Goodwill, and the Beijing crew, headed by Shen Jiye. The former wanted to become a non-profit security company aimed at shoring up the domestic security landscape, while the latter wanted to turn to a for-profit business model, geared towards the same idea but with a goal of shooting to the top of a growing domestic tech industry.
The break was nasty, leading to a domestic battle in court and in cyberspace, with both groups hacking each other’s infrastructure, posting taunting messages, and fueling the ongoing legal battle. In the end, the Beijing crew won out, resulting in a fine of over $130 thousand, a forfeiture of domains and infrastructure, and a disbanded group for Goodwill.
The Phoenix that rose from these ashes, whose website still claimed Goodwill as a founding member, was internet security company NSFocus. The next article of this series will detail what has become of China’s first and foremost nationalist hacking group, and how it rose from the ashes to become an InfoSec Titan in today’s modern era.
Huge thanks to Scott J. Henderson, author of groundbreaking book “The Dark Visitor: Inside the World of Chinese Hackers.” This book formed the focus of my studies over the last few years, and serves as a landmark in the study of Chinese hacker culture.
Follow me on Twitter and GitHub, as well as my Medium, for further updates on this project.
