Don’t worry, the Internet is not about to explode. China just has a new Internet weapon researchers have taken to calling the Great Cannon.
The Chinese regime keeps a tight grip on information through state-run media and something called the Great Firewall of China. It basically prevents Chinese netizens from seeing anything that might cause the formation of what’s known as “thoughts” in the area of the body known as the “brain.” Doctors say that when the brain begins to form thoughts, it can result in a potentially deadly condition known as thinking.
There are ways to get over the Great Firewall and there are American websites that help Chinese netizens view blocked content within China. A website like this, called GitHub, became the first known target of the Great Cannon.
GitHub is basically a library of code for programmers, and a major resource for tech companies in China--an industry the Chinese regime wants to develop. But, they also host several pages that break through the Great Firewall. One has code from GreatFire.org--a nonprofit group that runs mirrored copies of websites blocked in China, like Google or BBC. The other host links to mirror sites of the Chinese version of the New York Times.
Last month, GitHub was suddenly flooded by web traffic and their servers crashed. This went on for about two weeks and the cost to them was enormous. Here’s what happened:
According to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Toronto China, who dubbed the term Great Cannon, it uses what’s called “distributed denial of service” or DDoS. It hijacked web traffic going to Baidu, China’s largest search engine, and instead of getting the website you were using Baidu to search for, you were redirected to GitHub. But that volume of instantaneous traffic crashed their servers. It’s like siege warfare. Instead of outright blocking GitHub on the Chinese Internet, which the regime tried to do in 2013 but were forced to back down from when Chinese programmers raised a storm, the Great Cannon basically pressures the victim into dropping the offending pages.
In January 2014, the entire Chinese Internet crashed when two thirds of all Chinese web traffic was sent to the website of Dynamic Internet Technologies, a website created by Falun Gong practitioners to help Chinese netizens break through the Great Firewall. At the time, it was blamed on a glitch in the Great Firewall, but could it have been a botched test run of the Great Cannon?
Current Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been tightening the screws on the Internet since he came to power in 2012. For example, making “spreading rumors online,” an offense punishable by jail time. Xi also created the State Internet Information Office to “handle” dissenting opinions.
And the fact the Chinese regime is willing to sacrifice Baidu in favor of draconian censorship is shows just how far they’re willing to go. Baidu is China’s biggest search engine and millions in the US use it as well. According to Baidu spokesperson Kaiser Kuo, they had no part in the attack. The regime just used would-be Baidu users as a weapon without their consent. So how willing would you be to use Baidu ever again? That’s going to hurt their reputation, and their overseas market share. So the Chinese regime has made a clear declaration here. Its desire to develop profitable tech companies with a sterling reputation is outweighed by its desire for censorship. Pure and simple.
And here’s where it gets even scarier. Researches also say that with some simple modifications, the Great Cannon can be used to slave your computer to spy on anyone. Have you visited a website hosted on a Chinese computer? Have you visited a non-Chinese website that has an ad somewhere that has Chinese content? That’s potentially all it takes for the Chinese regime to take control of your computer and turn you into a weapon for its own ends.
So if the Chinese regime can weaponize American computers in their battle for control over the Internet, why hasn’t the United States government raised more of a stink? Well, that’s where things get a bit awkward. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the Great Cannon is very similar to one designed by the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ. That makes it a bit hard for US officials to take the moral high ground.
Of course there’s a difference. However you may feel about the NSA, it uses its version for targeted surveillance with the primary goal of stopping deadly terror attacks and protecting US citizens. China’s Great Cannon, on the other hand, is used for hyper aggressive censorship--and restricting its own citizens’ freedom.
So what do you think about the Great Cannon? And how will it affect how you browse the Internet? Leave your comments below.
