All has been relatively quiet on the Anonymous front as far as defacing Web sites are concerned. That has changed today as Anonymous China has attacked and defaced a number of Chinese government Web sites to protest the country’s censorship of the Internet.

A newly christened twitter feed for Anonymous China announced the attacks this morning and have been slowly taking down and defacing various government Web sites since. The page is like other defacements with ASCII text, a message to the government in question and other Anonymous trademarks. This defacement is far more entertaining than past hacks, however, because they autoplay The Who’s classic song Baba O’Riley.

@YourAnonNews Anonymous China arrived, see the Government defaces 🙂

— Anonymous China (@AnonymousChina) March 30, 2012

Anonymous has left a message to both the Chinese government and the Chinese people this time. The message is in English, so I don’t know how effective it is to the Chinese people who can’t speak English, but it does have one Chinese phrase, “患难见真情.” According to Google Translate, it means “A friend in need is a friend indeed.”

The message is as follows:

Hi all !

Message to Chinese government :

All these years, the Chinese Communist government has subjected its People to unfair laws and unhealthy processes. Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall. So expect us because we do not forgive, never. What you are doing today to your Great People, tomorrow will be inflicted to you.

With no mercy.

Nothing will stop us, nor your anger nor your weapons.
You do not scare us, because you cannot afraid an idea.

Message to Chinese People :

Each of you suffers from the tyranny of that regime which knows nothing about you. We are with you.
With you here and now. But also tomorrow and the coming days so promising for your freedom. We will never give up.

Don’t loose hope, the revolution begins in the heart.

The silence of all other countries highlights the lack of democracy and justice in China. It’s unbearable.
We must all fight for your freedom.

To add insult to injury, they provide a link on the defaced site that leads to a Web page Anonymous built inside the Chinese government’s Web site that shows Chinese citizens how to bypass state censorship. To be honest, it’s kind of funny and the kind of move we have come to expect from Anonymous.

As part of the hack, Anonymous has also leaked the account passwords of government workers for meda.gov.cn. Since I can not speak Chinese nor access the site, it’s hard to get a good grip on what sites were attacked. It does seem like the leak comes from one of the more important sites, however, since the sites’s innards posted to Pastebin indicate the site contained government research.

The Twitter for Anonymous China was started just this morning and has already announced five defaces and one leak. It looks like they’re not done yet either. This is a developing story and we’ll keep you updated throughout the day if there’s any change. China will probably not take the defacements very well so it will be interesting to see what their response is.