A glimpse of the underground world of China's Internet

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Feng Dahui (fenng) has shared a story about "hackers" in his micro-credit public account "Gossip", which has a legendary style, which many people read and say "Can't Believe". "The people questioned may not be ignorant, but things are beyond their cognitive scope," fenng. The three world of Chinese Internet, what happens in the underground world, people on the ground never know what's going on. ”

As for the three world of "China Internet", Fenng also mentioned this classification method in early 2012: "There are three internet forms in China." One is the media indoctrination of the internet, targeting overseas IPOs; one is grass-roots internet, low-key nuggets, such as the fierce dragon-like, a deep underground internet. ”

This division, is generally reasonable, if corresponding to its actual case, the first category is "Air Internet", usually keep in the media vision activities, with the western experience from the mature business model, such as well-known Baidu Amoy Baowibo. The second category is "Terrestrial Internet", the original eco-products that grow out of the atmosphere, very grassroots and urban characteristics, are generally immersed in money, few media attention-too much media attention to them is not a good thing, on behalf of 9158 (annual revenue broken 1 billion video dating site), 5173 ( China's largest network game trading platform), rain forest wind (with pirated Windows system, has been washed white) and so on.

The third category of "underground Internet", although involved in many of the invisible, free from the edge of the law of the business, but it is not exactly the same as a law outside the land. More often, whether it is to protect themselves or the security needs of the business, they will not actively float to the ground to let people find. However, in many cases, the underground Internet has inadvertently directly or indirectly affected the living environment of ordinary internet users, and even participated in the development of some terrestrial internet world must comply with the rules.

Here, I can talk about the three mountain peaks in the vast underground Internet iceberg that I have contacted or experienced, and they may be known only in written terms, but it is no exaggeration to say that they really influence some of the Chinese internet situation.

The first mountain, called "Hacker (Hacker)"

In theory, there is a significant misunderstanding of the definition of hackers, in short, this is originated from the U.S. computer industry's imported nouns are used to describe computer technology has in-depth research, defend the free sharing of the spirit of the network, and occasionally use the advantages of technology as a prank computer master. Only the beast is easy to volts, people are hard to fall, under the traction of selfish desires, some hackers have taken the malicious business software, intrusion Server system to seek the benefit of the road, these people are called cracker, and here is the story of the mountain, is cracker territory, but in order to facilitate understanding, Temporarily also translates the cracker to the hacker, everybody knows the actual difference is good.

Many media once more or less disclosed the "hacker" news, most of them belong to this kind, in the media, this kind of hacker seems to be from the mouse and keyboard hybrid genius, can break into any internet users of the computer, steal all kinds of information, or easily invade the major sites, but also can be deleted site home "to this visit "The proud record. These reports, more to hearsay, or interview has been arrested by the public security network blackmail as a source of information, both exaggerated--hackers usually have to have "Trojans" and other procedures as a bridge to invade, otherwise can not rely on the network cable to operate any designated users of the computer, there are also underestimated the place- Many of the small hackers who have been exposed because of the criminal is actually the most downstream of the hacker industry chain, only by relying on the trading platform to buy brute force or attack software, to a minimum chance to invade some of the weak defensive strength of the Web site database, to achieve the purpose of stealing account password.

The real stream of the top hackers, they are in fact a group of businessmen.

Businessmen have a characteristic, they are good at playing is the trade, with some things for other things, and then use other things for other things, and finally get the best interests of their own, and this seemingly technology-intensive business, under their control to become a labor-intensive business.

May 19, 2009, this is a landmark of Chinese internet history. The impression of netizens should remember that on this night around 9 o'clock, the country has a large area of broken network incidents, more than 23 provinces have been interrupted or blocked access to the phenomenon, lasted for several hours. Then, telecommunications operators and the Ministry of Information to the black pan to the storm audio and video head, said "because of the storm audio and video client software deficiencies, in the Storm audio and video domain name authorized server abnormal work, resulting in the installation of the software of the Internet terminal frequently initiates domain name resolution request, causing DNS congestion, Causing a large number of users to visit the Web site slow or not open. "And the truth behind the story is that storm audio and video should be partly responsible, but it is also one of the real victims. Later, a small number of media on the cause of the incident made a deeper excavation, found that hackers in the attack on DNS service providers, to its server downtime, and the storm audio and video domain name resolution is located on this server, and has Tens user scale storm audio and video at that time will be on the user's computer residue for monitoring status and pop-up ads process , the process in the return of information when the server encountered congestion, and then because of the storm audio and video set up the mechanism of the cumulative back to send requests, and finally directly paralyzed China Telecom's DNS server, so that the national net friends have broken.

Why is a hacker attack capable of causing such a shock? The core of the interest behind this is another industry: online gaming. The so-called online games are called "Servers". The legend of China's biggest online gaming product, after the source code leaked, in fact, disguised as a "open source" game product, any slightly technical users can independently build the legendary game of the private server, to provide a modified, in some ways more "exciting" than the official "legend" game. And on the basis of a huge user-pays base, China has sprung up with tens of thousands of legends on the ground--more than the peak number of subsequent Groupon sites--and some big hackers are eyeing the group.

"Legends" in the promotion of the general need to build a website, used to provide a game server IP or login download-This is the user's only access to the game, and the hacker aimed at the private operators to provide revenue support an indispensable entry, daily scan the new Web site, to the hands of the "operator" Send an attack command, the latter through conventional DDoS or other more sophisticated means to the target Web site attack paralysis, interrupt the user's entrance, and then contact the operator, ask for thousands of or even tens of thousands of dollars "waiver." If rejected, then further attack the game server, resulting in the player can not play properly, completely cut off the business operators of the capital. During the peak period, millions of servers in China were manipulated by such hackers every day to deter and combat Web sites and servers, and the operators were unable to seek police assistance because they were illegal businesses. (This from the side seems to prove the business of the astonishing profits, in the hacker, the official double blow can still be fought ...)

and 519 Break the net incident, is by a group of hackers in dozen a "legend", the direct attack to the latter server's DNS service provider, and then triggered the storm video chain reaction, causing catastrophe. This allows the ministry for the first time to realize the Internet in the risk of outside politics, there has been a network of police units trying to break into the hacker relationship and the chain of viral production and marketing, but the identity of the failure to cover the leak, but also played a certain deterrent effect. March 2010, the Ministry of Industry low-key launch of China's first Ministry of Communications Network security Ministerial Directive "Communication network security Protection management measures", the establishment of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, and also to the public security departments under the task indicators, a number of areas rising "catch hackers" hot, The final result can be imagined: some of the young people in the Internet café to learn the simple attack software of the heavy hackers involved in jail, and the real ability of hackers began to focus on the "invasion" to "stealth", but indirectly promote the level of China's encryption data network technology upgrade.

There are more single hackers engaged in the "envelope" transaction, through their own software to write malicious code into some of the lax prevention of the site database, resulting in the release of user data (or invasion of large Web sites on the web after the Trojan horse). At the end of 2011 CSDN was "towed the library" attack by hackers pulled out 6 million users of the clear text account password, that is, for example. The account number and password obtained in this way, usually by the hacker uses another program to carry on the various mainstream software or the game to carry on the cross-validation, for example, you in a forum's account number and the password is captured, the hacker will use this account and the password to hit QQ, each big mailbox, each big network game and so on, If it happens that someone's account and password are consistent in these places, they are encapsulated as a letter and become a commodity. These documents, known as "envelopes", are traded on the wholesale market, by the buyer to explore the value of more uses-such as the purchase of a game envelope, you can go to steal the online account of the equipment, and in the purchase of a QQ envelope, you can manipulate these QQ number to find friends cheat and so on. A retired hacker has revealed that the Chinese market grabs or is trading in the "envelope" over 2 billion, the annual output value of tens of billions of yuan.

Profit-driven hackers have the custom of "keeping numbers", if the Trojan or backdoor program to the user's computer, it will stare at some temporarily worthless, but there may be room for appreciation of the information, such as the level of the online account is not high, until the account to grow up to produce value after the "Harvest". Such hackers have some kind of "gratitude" for 360 of security software, because of their sample, users who do not have security software installed are much more likely to reload than users with security software-many users will use the reload system as a means of cleaning up the computer, and the reload system for 90% The above local Trojan or backdoor program has a devastating blow.

In China, Guangdong, Fujian are more hackers gathered in the region, the upstream industry chain hackers, basically have an industry. I know a hacker, open three nightclubs and a tea house, bubble antique and calligraphy and painting market, every month to smoke a day to his control of the work room audit, meetings, even his wife did not know his true face. Another hacker, who taught computer courses in a professional school during the day, knocked out the entire database of a famous game maker in one night, was wanted by the game maker, and he married a female planner for the game maker while he was wanted. The latter resented him for saying that a hacker had lost his company and affected his year-end award.

In this circle of hackers, the big despise small, think the latter is too insolent, not only disturb the market, and will attract unnecessary government attention. And small are looking forward to the big, and hope that they can become large, so often quick success of things happen. A 19-year-old hacker once hacked the official website of a local government to show his friends the results, and later he was caught by the police and expected to see the day until birthdays.

In addition, in the media to let a lot of people talk about "black" color change directly to steal silver money hacker behavior is rare, because at this time, the hacker's target is not without bargaining power of ordinary users, but the national financial institutions, once found, the consequences are not too able to withstand, And when more and more net silver will verify the handset as one of the trading links, the barrier of net silver is indeed relatively high. Rather than risk and difficulty to invade the bank's external system, some small hackers prefer to use the form of phishing page to induce users to trade on the false web site, and then take the opportunity to guide the fraudulent users into the designated account. The larger hackers, they can privately demonstrate how to invade the ability of large commercial companies and even national security systems, but generally do not move inside things, but not leave traces of the discrepancy.

Basically, because of some rules and self-protection factors, China's hacker circles have a lot of secrets, there is very little outflow, and even sometimes deliberately release some extremely exaggerated or contrary to the facts of the news, to disturb the outside line of sight, to achieve covert purposes. Most of them think that hacking is a business that eats young people, hope that as soon as the "Boss", the command of the younger generation in the front line, their own reward, and out of professional habits, they also have a lot of things in life to maintain a very high sensitivity nerves, a weekly registration of a new QQ, important code written in the notebook does not go to the computer, Notebook computer camera always affixed with opaque tape and so on, are common phenomenon, because of excessive tension and focus, neurasthenia, poor sleep quality, bad temper are hackers of the occupational disease.

Pornography

Next, the second mountain, called "pornography" (porn)

In the vast majority of countries in the world, pornography is a legitimate existence, and in China, because of the state system, the sex industry is still in the hostile camp of the law. However, the color sex is also, as the original demand of humanity, the pornographic website satisfies the Netizen to desire part of demand, according to BusinessInsider's report data shows, the pornographic website occupies the total number of global website 12%, its total flow ratio may approximate to the entire Internet traffic about 30%.

Although pornography is an illegal product in China, it does not deter some cities from becoming world-famous as "sex", as well as a cluster of pornographic sites such as the grass-shaped community.

The grass-Colorado State community was founded in 2006, the server in the United States, the Chinese once the largest erotic forum erotic June Days-the server, although located in the United States, but the main forum administrators are the Chinese people, but also because of internal struggle (mainly the distribution of income) and caused discord, Finally by the Shanxi Provincial Public Security Bureau will be part of the forum managers captured on the record. The grass-rich community fully absorbed the experience and lessons of the past, and basically will not set too many forum manager role, even if the need for some of the administrative authority of the account, it will not be in the community to speak and interact (early had, but later hidden away), As far as possible to avoid the information leakage or the risk of conflict. The actual controllers of the grass-Liu community have overseas nationalities and are protected by other countries ' laws.

The fact that many of the cases of the end of the Web site have been witnessed by a lot of lucrative disputes and that the main founders of the grass (several Chinese Americans) were not short of money, so they did not spend much on profitability. Because the grass-shaped community has always been a free operation policy--apart from a small range of display ads, there are not too many commercial mechanisms outside of the network, which makes the grass-root community's reputation a good one, and a pornographic forum that does not advertise a window and does not qualify users to buy a VIP can not be popular. June 2011, the grass-root community tried to open a day, the result of one night more than 130,000 new registered users, the management found that the database will collapse, so continue to use the invitation to register the mechanism to date.

But the grass-free community is not the leader in the Chinese sex web industry, it is just a major channel for the distribution of pornographic films, and, more upstream, the more covert pornographic sites. With Peer-to-peer sharing mode, the downloading of pornographic films has become the mainstream way for Chinese internet users to access pornographic information, and the film is not appearing out of thin air, its source in Japan, Europe and the United States and other countries in the form of commodities, then the middle of the need for local Chinese to buy the CD, And then turn the code into a network popular AVI or RMVB file format, such as the production of seeds uploaded to pornographic sites to provide peer-to-peer downloads, these people belong to the "hair". "Hair" is a minority of the obligation nature, most of which will be from the operators of pornographic sites to receive subsidies, while the latter use their videos to update the content, to attract users to download, spread, pay. Some users use these seeds as a resource and share them with sites such as the grass-root community, creating the latter's prosperity.

Outstanding "Hair", even in the forum to enjoy the high privileges, such as 18p2p famous "Nike" (User ID), this is a Hong Kong netizen, itself engaged in pornographic film CD-ROM business (legal in Hong Kong), Because of its ability to dozens of G a day on the scale of the network has been known for several years, on the network for a while more than 80% of the Japanese have a code chip source is from him there. 18P2P to this guest is also a multi-party magnanimous, expressly notice that no one should disturb Nike, including in its post reply offensive speech, or send a forum short message to him, etc., will be directly blocked ID processing. Nike finally because of their marriage and its favorite AV actress Pine Island maple outgoing News, and exit the river, the real "deep work and name", leaving only legends.

Cang Jing Air in China, Japan AV Circle is not very much to see, because as a fully legal in Japan, pornography is still a business through the sale of optical discs on the livelihood of the industry, the operators, distributors, the return is entirely determined by the customer purchase. Pornographic AV in the Chinese market is almost a pure peer-to-peer sharing model, in a country that ignores copyright, even pornography itself is illegal, instead of using the reputation accumulated from the film to cash out, no doubt released a "encourage Chinese to continue to pirated Japanese pornographic AV" signal. But Cang Jing Empty is only a case, both politically and sexually conservative in China, the treatment of the sex industry has not appeared with its treatment of other sectors of the economy show a "strong investment" positive attitude, 2CH (Japan's largest integrated community) on a Japanese netizen was very puzzled, " Why is it that China can pollute the soil and rivers until a century later, and then try to build an Eden in which everyone knows the truth but nobody tells the truth? Apart from the emptiness of the Cang well, in close proximity to China, there are often Chinese bars to come to the platform and even with a certain Spice brand cooperation in person to act as a model of the Semaria, respectively starred in the Hong Kong film "3D Meat and Zen" and "westward" of the original yarn Hisakika, As well as on Sina Weibo has a large number of fans on the appearance of Jay Chou-like AV male superior Tony Big Wood and other people.

In the Chinese market, a better operation of the pornographic site, a yearly income can probably reach tens of millions of yuan, the cost of the server and part-time staff (moderators, chip members, etc.), operators can start with millions of net profit, if excluding legal hidden dangers, or very attractive, And the operators of pornographic sites can reap the unique sense of honor--the experience of the entire community as a god-like cult of the administrator. Last year, a moderator of a pornographic website (Chinese-American) returned to visit relatives, every day there are local netizens lined up to invite their meals, including the rich private enterprise boss, driving a Mercedes-Benz to experience the changes in his hometown, but also said that "although (oneself) now often go to Dongguan, but before the rise is relying on him (refers to this moderator) I can't thank you enough for the movie I made on the forum ...

In addition, some netizens are not satisfied with the computer screen of the exotic actress waste toilet paper, so there are more types of network economy, to cater to this kind of loneliness and desire interwoven demand, including live video, buy spring exchange, couples change even. But because the yellow line is more trampled on the law, so most of them are confined to a small circle, unless the operators think money want to go crazy, otherwise do not make too much of a secret. I know an unemployed middle-aged man who relies on his wife to earn more than 300,000 yuan in one months of family income by selling plain stockings online.

Black PR

The third Hill, is "Black PR (gangsterdom PR)"

and "Hacker (cracker)" implicated in "hackers (Hacker)" Like, "Black PR (gangsterdom PR)" Also interfered with the "public Relations (PR)" Definition and views.

"PR (public Relations, PR)" was created by the United States media industry in the early 20th century concept, belong to the management function, meaning "Organization and public environment communication and communication relationship", with the development of public opinion economy, Edward L. Bernays This kind of scholar's promotion as well as "the public relations first, the advertisement second" and so on marketing classics textbook Popular, formally becomes the government and the enterprise a compulsory course.

In the PR industry, it is obvious that PR has a direct proportional trend to the fidelity of its ideas and the geopolitical freedom of the media and the degree of social democracy. In other words, the more backward and restricted the media of a country or region, the farther the political system is from the spirit of democracy, the easier it is for PR to evolve into a product that is completely different from its original concept in this land. This is not only in the public relations industry, has done beer channel expansion business should also be able to understand, want to promote a brand of beer in a county-level restaurant in China, and its beer taste, brand, publicity and other content is completely irrelevant, as long as the local responsible for a certain area of the bully, The latter will naturally take the troops to help you specify what beer the restaurant in the area must buy.

In the world of China's Internet, which is less regulated by law and system, there are a number of functional needs that are actually not implemented by PR, and are acting in the name of "PR" by "Black PR". and "hackers" use technology to achieve the goal of different ways, "black PR" in the technical content is very small, more in the four to dial the heavy, using resources as a lever, to target the fight and blackmail.

The Chinese car rental was planned to launch in 2012, but almost overnight, the news of the mainstream media, social networks on the Chinese car rental in the negative news, and the word is very fierce. The chairman of the China Car rental Lu Zhengyao later on the Weibo roar, "the endless Army attack, disguised as customers to the media burst material, incredibly also buy advertising suites send us negative, I am angry!" Also out of the "black PR" overwhelmed. April 2012, the Chinese car rental valuation by the level of the lower, and finally basically shrink to see the rate of return, had to temporarily exit the listing process.

"Shenzhen business newspaper" once had a "black-hearted PR" hunting "Listed companies" simple report, revealed that some enterprises in the run-up to the listing will be artificial stare, aiming at the smooth listing of enterprises and "cautious, hope to the wind" mentality, to coerce the way to seek benefits, if the company cooperate, "Black PR" Institutions are willing to make a Jews, do a love business, if the enterprise refuses to cooperate, that will have "obstruction", "deliberately finding fault" incidents occur frequently, in the enterprise listing the steps to make obstruct.

"Black PR" generally master a variety of forms of resources, graphic and network media, industry celebrities, the Navy are common resources, 3.15 and other special period is called "Nuclear weapons" exposure opportunity, with "turn over hand for clouds, hands for rain" to describe not too much. The "blackmail" of a listed commercial company is a lucrative one, but in terms of frequency it can be met and not, and more often they will "create" opportunities.

Some websites, including many portals, because of the human cost, some of the two-level channels with long tail value can not be self-employed, will be outsourced to some companies, the latter each year to pay a certain "agency fees", and then independent operation of the channel, self-financing. A lot of "black PR" also stared at this piece of fat, after the agent, using the channel because of the portal site and can be Baidu and other search engine News column crawler index included in the qualification, the home to find the channel theme-related enterprises to demand advertising costs, if rejected, will start to constantly exposure of enterprises negative, And many of China's network news sites There is a "collection" of the content of the organization model-that is, in order to fill the content update, the site and the site will be reprinted with each other news information, which led to the enterprise's negative information will become extremely complex in a short period of time, and then affect the At this time, "black PR" in the name of another shell company, door-to-door "coaching" enterprises, the sale of the deletion of the post business. This is why we see from many places to delete the company "powerful" rendering, in fact, sometimes it is not they have the ability to "delete" post, but the post itself is from them, they simply will post as a commodity "off the shelf" treatment.

Of course, there are "black PR" out of the matter, when a ruthless people encounter than their own more ruthless person, if not aware of the danger, will suffer. 360 Zhou is such a more ruthless person, the story in fact, the industry knows, Zhou said you put your old shout together waiting for me, I brought money over, and then I did not go, told his men brought the police past, the people were stolen by the other side to the end. But more businesses don't have the guts one in China this environment, there is not a small number of enterprises in the presence of small, and the enterprise itself will be concerned about whether to do things "too absolutely", the problem of money can be solved in most cases is not too big problem, if angered the other side, It is more difficult to clean up when the house of Vengeance is brought about by money.

As for some suspicious media, the "black PR" portrayed as the day into the huge profits of the industry, it is not so exaggerated. Some practitioners have been throwing up on me, and it is a very difficult thing to find the target of black. Small business, it does not care, you send him hundreds of negative, may instead help it to do propaganda, and larger enterprises, also began to pay attention to the legal department of the Construction and investment, in case of backfire, also outweigh the gains. And doing business in China is not entirely on the market, like Mengniu, whether it is a real accident or was black, its performance is very good, the reason is very simple, it has done business (political channels) and shelves (sales channels), to provide consumers with a single election situation, how can really fear public opinion of the word.

It can be said that "black PR" is only an extreme, the gray model of the Cross-border, its core spirit-"strong buy strong sell, otherwise you will be impolite" on the ground internet world also has the existence of civilization: people who have done the site know, which day Baidu bid ranked sales call to come, it means the end of good days, If you don't become a paying customer for Baidu, so soon, your site in Baidu where the number will be drastically reduced, your customers can not or difficult to find you from Baidu, and when the U.S. Internet "Portal" mode is on the verge of bankruptcy, China's "portal" website still thrive, This also has the United States Internet is difficult to reach a number of factors, a lot of advertising in the sale of enterprises, the state of mind are "money to eliminate the disaster" ...

"Hackers", "pornography", "black PR" is not all of the underground internet world, there are some with the "stock", "gambling" and other topics related to the industrial chain, but also in the public view is very moist running. In other words, as long as there is a grey area of profit, fungus spores will breed. The Chinese media has extended a sentence from Karl Marx's capital said that "if 100% of the profits, the capitalists will be very risk, if there is a 200% profit, capitalists will defy the law, if there are 300% of profits, then the capitalist will trample everything in the world." "This sentence itself is a logical mishap, in fact, it is not the original text in capital (but the annotation added in Chinese translation in the year), but it pointed to the phenomenon is widely proved, environmental pollution, food hidden trouble and other social contradictions are the reasons for this, the survival of the underground Internet source is no exception.

Hegel in the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts the dialectical Logic of "existence is reasonable", the so-called "reasonable", is often misinterpreted as "justified", the actual meaning should be "not accidental." At the end of this article, I would like to use it to explain the existence of the underground Internet world: The Internet is not a time away from the reality of society, on the contrary, it is rooted in the real society, while absorbing the black and white both sides of the civilization, whether it is on the ground, the ground or underground, the fruit is the same There are some open needs and intentions that do not vanish into thin air and fall into the ground and naturally have a chance of being met. We do not need to Ober, the passage of time, the perfection of the legal system, the evolution of science and technology, cultural changes will be to solve these, before that, it may be safe to watch, "Let the god of God, let Caesar's Caesar." ”