{"id":46099,"date":"2015-03-20T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=46099 "},"modified":"2015-03-20T17:30:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T17:30:00","slug":"46099-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=46099","title":{"rendered":"Anti-censorship China activists \\&#8217;under DDoS attack\\&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>19 March 2015 Last updated at 14:37 ET<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2015\/12\/2015320_81763897_capture.jpg\" alt=\"2015320_81763897_capture.jpg (624&#215;351)\" \/><\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>A campaign organisation that circumvents Chinese website blocks has said it has come under distributed denial of service attack (DDoS).<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Greatfire called the attack, which aimed to take sites offline, an attempt to enforce censorship.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>It said it did not know who was behind it, but pointed out that it coincided with pressure from Chinese authorities.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>One expert called the attack &#8220;censorship by brute force&#8221;, saying it could put Greatfire out of business.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Greatfire has tracked which sites are blocked in China and recently began offering a mirroring service to try to restore them for Chinese users.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Protection<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Similar to the campaign started by Reporters Without Borders last week, it set up content distribution networks (CDNs) using the same hosting services as many entities on which China relies.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Those networks created copies of banned websites and made them available to Chinese users.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>In theory, the method provided protection to Greatfire because, to be sure that the blocked websites remained inaccessible, attackers would have to take down the whole hosting service &#8211; including many sites that China wanted to remain live.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>However, in practice, the attackers managed to find the individual URLs of the sites the authorities sought to block &#8211; which are normally masked &#8211; and bombarded them, in a more targeted attack, said Prof Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8216;Attack&#8217;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;It is difficult not to conclude that someone, most likely a government annoyed that Greatfire has enabled previously censored websites to neuter their censoring technology, has decided to fight back,&#8221; he told the BBC.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>He added that keeping the sites online would require the purchase of more bandwidth, adding that he consequently believed the Chinese authorities wanted to put financial pressure on Greatfire.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;The big question will be whether the big companies that run the CDNs&#8230; will actually key the charges Greatfire is being forced to incur, or whether they believe the censorship avoiding method should be supported when under attack in this way.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8216;Help&#8217;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>In a statement published on its website, Greatfire said the attacks started on 17 March and &#8220;we are receiving up to 2.6 billion requests per hour which is about 2,500 times more than normal levels&#8221;.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/technology-31967100\" target=\"_blank\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;It said it did not know who was behind it, but pointed out that it coincided with pressure from Chinese authorities. One expert called the attack &quot;censorship by brute force&quot;, saying it could put Greatfire out of business.&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}