Hackers target petition against HSBC’s pro-LGBT lions, Hong Kong family alliance says

Petition organiser Roger Wong Wai-ming, convenor of the Family School Sexual Orientation Discrimination Ordinance Concern Group, said thousands of signatures were lost on its Chinese petition platform against the bank’s campaign to support sexual minorities.

Watch: HSBC’s rainbow lions cause storm in Hong Kong

By December 8, a day before the alleged cyberattack, the group claimed it had collected 10,645 signatures, with 72.6 per cent being HSBC customers and 16.6 per cent its shareholders.

The petition, jointly organised by eight groups, was launched on December 5 to express disapproval at the “disgusting” display, which they claimed had trampled on the family values of Hongkongers and hurt the feelings of customers and shareholders.

“We already planned to stage a protest on December 14 in front of the two lions. However, we found that our Chinese website might be under attack as the signatures collected on December 9 were garbled,” Wong told the Post.

He said they could retain only 6,600 intact signatures while the data showed there were more than 70,000 garbled signatures.

“We don’t know how many garbled signatures are real. The IT experts we consulted believed that someone used a program to generate signatures with garbage information maliciously.”