Hacker unveils Olympic discrepancy

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 21 Aug 2008 at 08:58

A hacker and amateur sleuth has uncovered evidence online that a gold-winning Chinese gymnast is below the minimum age to participate in the Olympics.

The researcher, who goes by the pseudonym Stryde Hax, searched for documents relating to gymnast He Kexin's age using Google and the popular Chinese search engine, Baidu, after hearing rumours that she was underage.

To participate in the Olympics a gymnast must be at least 16 years old, but some reports suggested that He Kexin was in fact only 14.

One interesting Excel spreadsheet was found via Google, the summary of which suggested it included Kexin's date of birth. However, the file had been removed, and any trace of the gymnast's name expunged from the cached version.

Baidu, though, revealed more information, in spreadsheets issued by the General Administration of Sport in China.

"In the Baidu cache, which apparently has not been hit with the scrub brush (yet), two spreadsheets published by the Chinese government on sport.gov.cn both list He Kexin's birthday as 01-01-1994, making her 14 years old," says Stryde Hax on his personal blog.

The allegations are backed up by a story from the Xinhua news agency that ran late last year, giving Kexin's age as 13. This has since been retracted and explained as a mistake.

Speaking to the Times, though, the gymnast denied the allegations. "My real age is 16. I don't care what other people say. I want other people to know that 16 is my real age."

If the allegations are true, then it is likely that the Chinese Government would have needed assistance from Google to remove files from its search index.

"This story now is really about internet censorship, the act of removing evidence while at the same time claiming that the evidence is wrong," explains Styde Hax.

Google could not be reached for comment at the time of writing.