As Philippine and Chinese vessels remain locked in a standoff over the Scarborough Shoal, a cyber war broke out leaving websites defaced in both Asian countries.

A day after a Philippine university website was brought down Friday by supposedly Chinese hackers claiming “Huangyan Island (Scarborough Shoal) is Ours!”, Filipino hactivists fought back by vandalizing several Chinese websites.

“Anonymous #OccupyPhilippines” attacked the China University Media Union site, replacing its homepage content with a digitized image of a Guy Fawkes mask, which symbolizes global protest hacking group Anonymous. Their message: “Chinese government is clearly retarded. Scarborough Shoal is ours!”

Hackers also broke into a Chinese government site, http://gh.rc.gov.cn/, and posted a map of the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea). “You got ....ed by the Philippines! Spratly Island Is OURS!,” they wrote.

The other hacked Chinese sites are http://www.lanseyinxiang.com/, v.cyol.com, http://sanxinsudi.com, ploft.cn and ryjzw.com.

On Friday, hackers attacked the official website of the University of the Philippines System, forcing the state university to temporarily bring it down.

UP site hacked over Scarborough Shoal

A screenshot of the defaced website showed a map with Chinese script that highlighted islands in the West Philippine Sea being claimed by the Philippines and China.

Below the map was a caption repeatedly posted, “We come from China! Huangyan Island is Ours!”

Huangyan is the Chinese name for the Scarborough Shoal, where the two countries have had vessels stationed for nearly two weeks in a standoff to assert their rival claims to the area


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