Study sheds light on cyber version of the Great Wall of China
According to new research, China is regularly blocking about 311,000 domains, but only about 1,800 of them are among the most popular sites on the internet. Newly-registered domains are frequently blocked by default until they are approved by the authorities
Cybertech
| 13/07/2021
BIGSTOCK/Copyright: karenroach
Almost everyone knows that China engages in very extensive censorship of the internet that prevents access to some of the most popular domains in the world today such as those of Google, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia. And now, new academic research has shed light on the scope of the phenomenon, revealing that China's firewall blocks about 311,000 domains including about 41,000 by accident.
The research was conducted over nine months last year (April-October 2020) by staff from four universities in the U.S. and Canada. During the research, they checked about 534 million domains, accessing an average of 411 million on a daily basis. The findings were published by The Record website of American cyber company Recorded Future.
The researchers developed a system that accessed domains from inside and outside China's internet space and then measured how the "Great Firewall" (the Chinese network that monitors and blocks unwanted content from other countries, also known as the "Golden Shield Project") tampers with the DNS servers to prevent Chinese users from accessing certain domains, or external users from accessing Chinese internal sites.
The statistics of the system called GFWatch revealed at the end of the research, as mentioned above, that about 270,000 domains were intentionally blocked by the Chinese regime, and the rest were blocked by accident, apparently due to filtering errors. Thus, for example, the intentional blocking of the Reddit social network also (apparently, according to the assumption of the researchers) led to the unintentional blocking of sites with similar names such as geareddit, an online printing store.
According to the research, about 40% of the domains were ones that were registered recently and blocked by default by the regime until it could assess them. Thus, for example, many domains linked to COVID-19 were blocked when they sprung up like mushrooms during 2020. Some of the sites, which were left blocked, included accusations that China was the source of the pandemic, and criticism of China's overall conduct on the issue.
Domains related to business, pornography, IT, gambling, private sites and blogs, entertainment, news, and malicious sites were also blocked. It is interesting to note that among a sample of more than 138,000 sites checked by the researchers, only 1,800 of them are on the list of the 100,000 most popular sites on the internet.
According to new research, China is regularly blocking about 311,000 domains, but only about 1,800 of them are among the most popular sites on the internet. Newly-registered domains are frequently blocked by default until they are approved by the authorities
BIGSTOCK/Copyright: karenroach
Almost everyone knows that China engages in very extensive censorship of the internet that prevents access to some of the most popular domains in the world today such as those of Google, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia. And now, new academic research has shed light on the scope of the phenomenon, revealing that China's firewall blocks about 311,000 domains including about 41,000 by accident.
The research was conducted over nine months last year (April-October 2020) by staff from four universities in the U.S. and Canada. During the research, they checked about 534 million domains, accessing an average of 411 million on a daily basis. The findings were published by The Record website of American cyber company Recorded Future.
The researchers developed a system that accessed domains from inside and outside China's internet space and then measured how the "Great Firewall" (the Chinese network that monitors and blocks unwanted content from other countries, also known as the "Golden Shield Project") tampers with the DNS servers to prevent Chinese users from accessing certain domains, or external users from accessing Chinese internal sites.
The statistics of the system called GFWatch revealed at the end of the research, as mentioned above, that about 270,000 domains were intentionally blocked by the Chinese regime, and the rest were blocked by accident, apparently due to filtering errors. Thus, for example, the intentional blocking of the Reddit social network also (apparently, according to the assumption of the researchers) led to the unintentional blocking of sites with similar names such as geareddit, an online printing store.
According to the research, about 40% of the domains were ones that were registered recently and blocked by default by the regime until it could assess them. Thus, for example, many domains linked to COVID-19 were blocked when they sprung up like mushrooms during 2020. Some of the sites, which were left blocked, included accusations that China was the source of the pandemic, and criticism of China's overall conduct on the issue.
Domains related to business, pornography, IT, gambling, private sites and blogs, entertainment, news, and malicious sites were also blocked. It is interesting to note that among a sample of more than 138,000 sites checked by the researchers, only 1,800 of them are on the list of the 100,000 most popular sites on the internet.
