(Source from Sun Herald)

The Australian newspaper Sun Herald published a comic on Aug. 11 with the headline: "Who would want to attack Australia’s census anyway?"

In the comic, Chinese Olympic swimmer Sun Yang is depicted as a hacker, hacking his way onto the census website. Wearing China’s national swimming cap and swim trucks, a thought bubble shows Sun thinking, "Revenge is mine!" as he types on the keyboard. In the bottom right corner of the comic is the sentence, "The ABS [Australian Bureau of Statistics] should win a (fool's) gold medal for this!"

The story behind the comic is this: on Aug. 9, when people across Australia logged onto the census website to fill in their personal information, the webpage showed that the system was busy. Later, it broke down entirely. The Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) explained that the website had been attacked by overseas hackers, insinuating that the perpetrators were Chinese and that they were taking revenge for Horton's "drug cheat" allegations against Sun. Not long after, the Australian government gave an official press conference to address the rumors, promising that the hackers had not gained access to citizens' personal information.

(Source from Sydney Today)

The same day the comic was published, there was limited access to the official website of Swimming Australia. Australian media was quick to link the incident to the ongoing feud between Sun and Australian swimmer Mack Horton.

The website is already back up and running. ABS has apologized to the public for the inconvenience.