China Is Said to Use Powerful New Weapon to Censor Internet
In March, China used a cyberweapon to redirect huge amounts of online traffic from Chinese search engine Baidu to targeted US websites. Rsearchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and University of Toronto have since suggested that the blitzes were orchestrated by a new weapon. “The Great Cannon, the researchers said in a report published on Friday, allows China to intercept foreign web traffic as it flows to Chinese websites, inject malicious code and repurpose the traffic as Beijing sees fit,” reports Nicole Perloth for the New York Times. The researchers suggest the tool could be used to spy on anyone collecting content hosted on a Chinese computer, including Chinese advertising on non-Chinese websites. The is reported to be similar to one used by the US National Security Agency and the British GCHQ, as described in files leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The researchers urge encryption of traffic, and Perloth concludes that “the attacks also show the extent to which Beijing is willing to sacrifice other national goals, even economic ones, in the name of censorship.” – YaleGlobal
China Is Said to Use Powerful New Weapon to Censor Internet
China’s so-called Great Cannon is reported to redirect massive internet traffic to target websites, raising concerns about new espionage and dissident crackdown capabilities
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Nicole Perlroth, technology reporter for The New York Times, covers cybersecurity and privacy for the Bits blog and for print. Before joining the San Francisco bureau of The Times in 2011, she was a deputy editor at Forbes where she covered venture capital and Web start-ups and produced the Midas List, the magazine’s annual ranking of top tech deal makers. Her reporting has ranged beyond technology to topics like food, bioethics and education.
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