Search Engine Hacker Reveals Chinese Gymnasts' Tru

Search Engine Hacker Reveals Chinese Gymnasts' True Age

Proving once again that search engines can be some of the greatest hacking tools on the internet



A clever search engine hacker says he’s located primary source documents, provided by the Chinese government, that contain proof of an age-related cover-up on behalf of the Chinese women’s gymnastics team.

Working under the pseudonym “Stryde Hax” and posting to his blog, he says he was able to download spreadsheets previously deleted by the Chinese government by pulling up a cached copy stored on Chinese search-engine Baidu.

Stryde’s Blogger profile describes him as a consultant for security firm Intrepidus Group, and says he spends his spare time “[finding] things on web servers that were never meant to be found.”

His efforts focused specifically on gold-medal winning gymnast He Kexin, whose age is widely reported to be 16 years old. He’s passport lists her date of birth to be January 1, 1992 – however reports from a variety of news sources, including Chinese English-language newspaper China Daily, previously showed her birthday to be January 1, 1994, placing her age at a disqualifying 14 years old. (Many of the original reports allegedly disappeared soon after the scandal initially broke out.)

In order to participate, Olympic gymnasts must be at least 16 years old. The sport has a long history of contestants misrepresenting their age in order to participate in senior-level competitions.

Stryde says the documents he located were originally stored on web servers for the General Administration of Sport of China, however they appear to have been removed after a similar – largely unnoticed – story ran last July in the New York Times. Running a specially constructed search query against Google yielded a handful of results that ended up going nowhere, and Google’s cached data revealed what appeared to him as doctored or missing information. Running the same query against Baidu, however, netted another set of results that, like Google, went nowhere – but unlike Google, contained cached information clearly showing He with a birthday of January 1, 1994.

In response to his calls for urgency – not to mention front page exposure on Slashdot and Digg – Stryde says he’s been overwhelmed with support from readers, many who decided to mirror the spreadsheets on their own before they disappeared off of the web completely.

Of particular interest is a machine-translated version of his findings, which clearly state:

799, BB He Kexin CC female AA 1994.1.01 Beijing and
Beijing Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau, First Note

Regardless of the authenticity of Stryde’s findings – a handful of commenters dispute his claims – it’s possible that should his evidence either prove to be conclusive, or lead to the introduction of even more definitive evidence, then the 2008 Chinese gymnastics scandal could be the next in line to be felled by a relatively new phenomenon called “crowdsourcing,” or tapping into the collective knowledge of the internet. A similar phenomenon may have hastened the retirement of CBS news anchor Dan Rather, who once presented evidence of a story on air that the blogosphere later proved to be false.

At the time of this writing, the cached documents still appear to be online at Baidu.



Thats some crappy sh*t

Horrible.

You guys already know that the little chines girl that sang the opening song at the Olympics was lip sinking right? and the actual girl that was singing was in the back, they said she was not pretty enough to represent china.

that was really sick too, that poor little girl with the great voice was put in the back room while the other one lip sank

Edited by DST4ME - 21 Aug 2008 at 2:17pm

Well, not as much politics as bragging rights.  However, one can't go in and say "I have a bionic arm and can throw my javeline a mile and you poor organic person can only do it a few hundred yards".  It's like racing a Yugo with a Mazaradi.

I think every country that hosts ends up getting more gold then they normally would, how many did china have in Greece?

Michael Phelps is actually under review now as it is. One of his medals are falling under scrutiny. They are saying that the company that designed the sensor, is a Michael Phelps sponsor or something of that nature. So its not just China falling under scrutiny, albeit they are falling under more then other places.

Test away on all of the atheletes and confirm everything is on the up and up as far as I'm concerned. This validates the wins of those that deserve their victories, and clears them of the FUD cast about by those with a nationalistic axe to grind. At the same time, those guilty is misconduct, regardless of nationality, should be not only stripped of all wins, but recieve a lifetime ban from any future Olympic games for their trouble.

I am iffy on the age of the Chinese gymnasts. (I know this is late) but, isn't the fact if they DO turn out to be 14, make thier wins that much more impressive?

Matt

Originally posted by Iraq Now I am iffy on the age of the Chinese gymnasts. (I know this is late) but, isn't the fact if they DO turn out to be 14, make thier wins that much more impressive? Matt

younger in that sport gives you advantages over your older competitors.