great firewall of china | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Update: Microsoft's search engine Bing has been restored in China after being inaccessible in the country for almost two days. According to sources familiar with the matter, Bing was blocked due to an accidental technical error and not due to an attempt at censorship. China has blocked Microsoft-owned search engine Bing , the company confirmed after receiving complaints from users throughout the country who took to social media beginning late Wednesday to express concerns. So, Bing becomes the latest service to be shut down by Chinese government behind its so-called Great Firewall of China , which blocks thousands of websites originating in the west including Facebook, WhatsApp , Twitter, Yahoo, and Google. The news came as a surprise because Microsoft's search engine actually followed China's strict rules on censoring search results. Online service WebSitePulse that tracks outages in China also confirmed that cn.bing.com—the web address for Bing in China since

While continuing its crackdown on services that help Chinese citizens to bypass Great Firewall, Chinese authorities have sentenced a man to five-and-a-half years in prison for selling a VPN service without obtaining a proper license from the government. Earlier this year, the Chinese government announced a ban on "unauthorized" VPN services , making it mandatory for companies to obtain an appropriate license from the government in order to operate in the country. Citizens in China usually make use of VPN and Proxy services to bypass the country's Great Firewall, also known as the Golden Shield project, which employs a variety of tricks to censor the Internet in the country. The Great Firewall project already blocked access to more than 150 out of the world's 1,000 top websites, which includes Google, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Tumblr, and The Pirate Bay in the country. VPN helps Chinese citizens encrypt their Internet traffic and route it through a distant c

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Image source: goldenfrog In an effort to continue its crackdown on VPNs, Chinese authorities have arrested a 26-year-old man for selling VPN software on the Internet. China's Supreme Court has sentenced Deng Jiewei from Dongguan in Guangdong province, close to Hong Kong, to nine months in prison for selling virtual private network (VPN) software through his own small independent website. VPN encrypts users' Internet traffic and routes it through a distant connection so that web surfers can hide their identities and location data while accessing websites that are usually restricted or censored by any country. Chinese citizens usually make use of VPNs to bypass the Great Firewall of China , also known as the Golden Shield project, which employs a variety of tricks to censor the Internet in the country. The project already blocked access to some 171 out of the world's 1,000 top websites, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Dropbox, and The Pirate Bay in

Online Privacy has been one of the biggest challenges in today's interconnected world, as the governments across the world have been found censoring the Internet, stealing information and conducting mass surveillance on innocent people. China is one such nation which always wanted to have a tight hold on its citizen and has long been known for its strict Internet censorship laws through the Great Firewall of China. The Great Firewall of China is the nation's Golden Shield project that employs a variety of tricks to censor Internet and block access to various foreign news and social media sites, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Dropbox, and The Pirate Bay. So, in order to thwart these restrictions and access blocked websites, hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens rely on virtual private networks (VPNs) which route their traffic to servers overseas free of the Great Firewall filters, but this may not be an option soon. For those unfamiliar, Virtual P

China is long known for its strict Internet censorship laws through the Great Firewall of China – China's Golden Shield project that employs a variety of tricks to censor Internet and block access to various foreign websites in the country by its government. The Great Firewall has blocked some 171 out of the world's 1,000 top websites, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Dropbox, and The Pirate Bay. Therefore, to thwart these restrictions and access these sites, hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens use virtual private networks (VPNs). But now, the Chinese government has announced the mass shutdown of VPNs in the country, making it harder for internet users to bypass its Great Firewall, according to a report published by the South China Morning Post. 'Clean-Up' of China's Internet Connections Calling it a "clean-up" of China's Internet connections, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Sunday that it had

China has long been known for its strict censorship which makes it difficult for foreign technology companies to do business in the world's most populous country of over 1.35 billion people. Now, the new law issued by the Chinese government will expand its strict Internet monitoring efforts into mobile apps, targeting operators including Apple. However, Google currently doesn't operate its app store in China. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has imposed new regulation on distributors of mobile apps that requires both app stores and app developers keep a close eye on users and maintain a record of their activities for at least 60 days . The Chinese internet regulator has introduced the new legislation with the intent to fight issues like terrorism, pornography, violence, money fraud and distribution of malicious contents. However, this new move by the Chinese government will tighten its control over the Internet, especially the mobile apps used for private encry

China has gained a considerable global attention when it comes to their Internet policies in the past years; whether it's introducing its own search engine dubbed " Baidu ," Great Firewall of China , its homebrew China Operating System (COP) and many more. Along with the developments, China has long been criticized for suspected backdoors in its products: Xiaomi and Star N9500 smartphones are top examples. Now, Chinese Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been caught red-handed for injecting Advertisements as well as Malware through their network traffic. Three Israeli researchers uncovered that the major Chinese-based ISPs named China Telecom and China Unicom , two of Asia's largest network operators, have been engaged in an illegal practice of content injection in network traffic. Chinese ISPs had set up many proxy servers to pollute the client's network traffic not only with insignificant advertisements but also malware links, in s

Google is planning to introduce a trimmed down special version of Google Play Store and Android Wear to The Mainland China. But wait, if I'm not wrong… Google had ended ties with China five years ago. Then what made Google to re-establish itself in China once again? Business?? Recent reports by Amir Efrati at The Information state that Google has massive plans to re-establish itself in the Mainland China. The search engine giant is aiming to get approval from China (the largest populated country in the world) for: Reviving Google as the Internet service provider Designing a tailor-made Google play store for China Android Wear software for the wearable existing in China Smart steps, though, but what happened back in 2010? Google and China always contradict each other, China's Internet laws and Google's censoring the search engine was one battle. In 2010, Google famously retracted its search engine Google.cn from Mainland China, after they ma

Github – the popular code sharing website used by programmers to collaborate on software development – again became a victim of a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Tuesday morning. The attack came just a few months after the popular code repository website GitHub suffered a massive DDoS attack, which was linked to China. Also Read: China Using A Powerful 'Great Cannon' Weapon to Censor The Internet The company was made aware of the issue early on Tuesday. After investigating the problem, the team discovered that the service was under a new DDoS attack. The code repository disclosed the new attack on its status page as well as its official Twitter account. "The connectivity problems have been identified as a DDoS attack. We're working to mitigate now," GitHub status log read early on Tuesday. The March DDoS attack against GitHub lasted close to a week . At the time, the attackers used malicious JavaScript to hijack Internet

From past few days, Internet Users in China are dealing with a weird redirection of traffic nationwide while accessing any website that makes use of connect.facebook.net resource. Great Firewall of China , which is infamous for the Internet censorship by Chinese government, believes to be intercepting the JavaScript module used by Facebook Connect Login, which is meant to allow third-party websites to authorize users through Facebook infrastructure. Chinese Internet users are complaining that when they visit any website that contain " Login with Facebook " or " Connect with Facebook " buttons (which is being used by a vast number of sites), they automatically redirect to unrelated websites. The two websites to which the traffic is being redirected: wpkg.org — A website for open source automated software deployment, upgrade, and removal program for Windows. ptraveler.com — A personal travel blog authored by a young couple of Poland. "Th

China has something very impressive that we are not aware of. The country has a powerful and previously unknown weapon that its government is using to bolster their cyber attack capabilities: Dubbed " The Great Cannon. " INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN CHINA When I talk about Internet censorship, it is incomplete if I don't mention China. China is famous for its Great Wall of China and Great Firewall of China . The censoring of Internet access and blocking an individual website in China by its government, known as the Great Firewall of China. But, why the Chinese government does that? The answer is very simple: The Chinese government restricts those contents it deems sensitive for its country's so-called democracy. It illegalize certain online speech and activities, block selected websites, and filter keywords out of searches initiated from computers located in Mainland China. The worse: Those Chinese citizens who offend authorities against Int