Jan 16 2010
One of the Chinese blogs I read had a post about this Baidu dictionary reference.
Loosely translated: Freedom of Speech – basically not in China. It gives a link to a board where it may have picked up this definition. The author, greysign, laments that there are rampant lawless anti-party elements slandering China. Is it really slander to say that there isn’t freedom of speech in China?
Jan 13 2010
This is starting to get boring…
Lawyers for Cybersitter, the company that claims its intellectual property was ripped off by PRC companies that developed the green dam youth escort in home censorware are now claiming that they have been targeted in spear phishing style attacks. Maybe the PRC companies didn’t get all of the code the first time.
Article here – linked from Danwei (one of my favorite China sites).
Comments Off
Jan 13 2010
In an apparent outrage at the defacing of Baidu, the great national symbol of the PRC interwebz, Chinese hackers have defaced an Iranian site that distributes information about diabetes. Take that Iranian nationalist hackers!
Jan 12 2010
In what may be the most significant news posted to this blog in a long time, the Official Google Blog reports that Google will be working with the PRC government to deliver an unfiltered google.cn to users in the PRC. If an agreement with the PRC government cannot be reached, google.cn may suspend operations. From the blog post:
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
This move is in response to an internal Google investigation that revealed widespread targeting and surveillance of human rights activists with interests in the PRC. The blog indicates that there are two distinctly different problems that were uncovered. One involved the compromise of internal Google intellectual property and the other involved the accessing of gmail accounts by unauthorized third parties.
…we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties.
Google believes that the sophisticated attacks that resulted in the internal compromise of Google information have also hit more than 20 other organizations.
So what does this mean? It is difficult to say at this point. Perhaps it will draw attention to the censorship issue as well as the widespread hacking frequently attributed to the PRC government. I think it will be unlikely that google.cn will be allowed to operate in the PRC without filtering its search results. This may mean that google.cn will cease to exist or that it is operated outside of the PRC where it will probably get GFW’d. Either way, Baidu wins.
It would be very cool if others (yahoo!, microsoft) follow suit.
Jan 12 2010
Several Chinese security bloggers and the Rising AV company are reporting that Chinese hackers are going after Iranian websites. Apparently in response to the Baidu DNS compromise.
Jan 12 2010
The Iranian Cyber Army has compromised the DNS records for baidu.com by logging into their DNS management portal at register.com. You might remember the Iranian Cyber Army from their recent twitter DNS compromise. There are many blogs and news outlets reporting on this.
I know some readers might wonder if this will spark some sort of cyber war between Iran and the PRC.
From BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8453718.stm
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/17/twitter-reportedly-hacked-by-iranian-cyber-army/
Dec 13 2009
The .cn Top Level Domain has been frequently associated with malware, pornography and spamvertising. In an apparent effort to clean up the TLD, China NIC has started requiring a business license in order to register a .cn domain.
The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) published a notice Sunday saying that applicants must submit written applications to the registration agents. The written materials must include an application form with an official seal, an enterprise business license and the registrant’s ID card.
In addition, the NIC will actually attempt to notify and verify individually owned .cn sites. If a site owner doesn’t respond in after five days, the domain will be revoked.
CNNIC plans to verify the information of the owners of personal site in the nation. Those found unqualified to have a site will be required to update the information in five working days, otherwise they will be shut down.
This is an interesting development. Clearly, something needed to be done about the .cn TLD garbage sites clogging up the tubes. I’m not sure what this means for individual site operators though. I’m sure it is still possible for individuals within the PRC to get a non-cn TLD and host their websites outside of the mainland.
Source: “All .cn websites require business license” – http://business.globaltimes.cn/china-economy/2009-12/491515.html – Linked from Danwei.
Nov 24 2009
HT to Sunbelt for this article about the piloyd worm jacking up web pages in the PRC. Not enough details yet to determine the vector. According to Sunbelt’s article, it is 8/41 on virustotal.com. I’ll update this post if I’m able to collect a sample for analysis.
Here are some details from threatexpert.com.
Sep 07 2009
This was posted by Scott Henderson (Trying to comply with the law of the land)
Green Dam, the censorship software that the Chinese government wanted on all PCs sold in China, turned out to be a flop. Beijing’s still keen on exerting greater control over the Internet, though, and Jonathan Ansfield has a good story in the New York Times about the censors’ latest tactic. According to Ansfield’s story, new “secret government orders” have been forcing popular Chinese websites to require new users register with their real names before posting any comments online.
Aug 31 2009
Hong Lei
More on Tomato Garden and the arrest of Hong Lei, the author of the pirated software. Online polls show massive support for Hong Lei as a nationalist hero:
The Chinese IT community is abuzz with news of the arrest of Hong Lei, distributor of the popular “Tomato Garden” pirate version of Windows XP, which means the popular unlocked version of the Microsoft software will no longer be available.
According to Sina.com, more than 90 percent of users they surveyed are or were users of Tomato Garden pirate editions. And 79 percent said they were on Tomato Garden’s side. Less than 5 percent said they supported Microsoft.
The Wall Street Journal has some interesting interviews with people inside China concerning the case and the drivers behind the software theft.
