User:Chen Junyu/Reading Writing Research Methodologies/essay
NO TITLE In 2009, one of the most influential unofficial political website of China—Niubowang (bullog.cn) closed. Bullog.cn was founded by Luo Yonghao in 2006, because he felt dissatisfaction with the censorship of the major blog portals like sohu.com , sina.com .Luo invited some blogger whom he liked personally, who have a strong and scientific perspectives for liberal and polity. Niubowang was not alone.Conducted under a wide variety of laws and daministrative regulations, Internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China shut down a large number of websites, which are mostly relevant to sensitive political topics ( Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 ,Tibetan independence movement , Taiwan independence ), religion ( Falun Gong ) and eroticism.To support this world’s biggest prison of netizen, China has the most advanced Internet censiship system which is constituted by technical means and administrative means.
Technical Implementation
Chinese government has started buliding “Great Firewall” from 1998 which can block content by preventing IP blocking ,DNS filtering and redirection, URL filtering ,packet filtering, Man-in-the middle attack and TCP connection reset .
- IP Blocking
TCP and IP are the leading protocols for the actual transmission of data from one computer to another over the network.They work together to establish connections between computers and move data packets effectively through those connections.Any computer on the network can talk to any other computer by TCP/IP. IP blocking means the access to a certain IP address is denied. As the design of TCP/IP, when the target website (it sends undesired connections) is hosted in a shared hosting server from hosts, all websites on the same server will be blocked.
- DNS Flitering /Redirection and URL Filtering
DNS is a large decentralized database that maps network addresses to network names.It focuses control into rigidly defined hierarchies. For example, in order to visit www.rhizome.org on the Internet one’s computer must first translate the name www.rhizome.org itself geographically vague, into a specific address (IP)on the physical network. All DNS information is controlled in a hierarchical, inverted-tree structure.At the top of this inverted tree are a handful of so-called “root”servers holding ultimate control and delegating lesser control to lower branches in the hierarchy.There are 13 groups root servers all over the world ,none of them is directly controlled by Chinese mainland, but there are some mirrors in mainland. Chinese government cannot control Web domain names fundamentally, so they started use IDS( Intrusion-detection system) monitor system supported by Routers to prevent people visiting filtered websites in around 2002 . At the same time, Chinese government also started keeping blocking abroad DNS servers. By controlling major router companies, government can get the request information from personal computer. The monitor computer will compare your request to the “blacklist”, if the IP you want to visit is on the list, the server will stop the request. Even the URL is not included in the blacklist, the request will also be reseted when the URL includes the forbidden words.
- Packet Filtering
When a certain number of contoversial keywords are detected, TCP packet transmission will be terminated. That is why many keywords cannot be searched on Chinese websites . This can be effective with many TCP protocols such as HTTP,FTP or POP, but Search engine pages are more likely to be censored.
- Man-in-the Middle attack
The GFW( the Great Firewall ) can use a root certificate from CINIC ( China Internet Network Information Center ) , which is found in most operating systems and browsers, to make a MITM attack.
- TCP Connection Reset
TCP/IP are the leading protocols for the actual transmission of data from one computer to another over the network.TCP connection reset is relevant with IP blocking . If a previous TCP connection is blocked by the filter, future connection attempts from both sides will also be blocked for up to 30 minutes.
Adminstrative Means
The administrative control in People’s Republic of China is a complicated net-structure system. To monitor , supervise, implement the internal Internet of China and prevent information coming from “outside”,there are numerous departments which are under the jurisdiction of Chinese government : the public security ( Internet policemen) ; the national security department ; News management departments; telecomunication adminstration departments; culture management department; Department of radio ,film and television; publishing divisions... From 2006, the relevant departments started to recruit “part-time” Network supervisor. They are regularly taken the guidance of the relevant departments, and use their leisure time to monitor the “Uncivilized behavior, illegal information” on the Internet and submit the results and information to government by email, telephone and irregular meetings. There is 10% of all news websites in China are controlled directly by the government, apart from this public government voice, the government also hires many Internet commentators to post comments favorable towards party policies in an attempt to shape and sway public opinionon various Internet message boards. This kind of Internet commentators are called “ 50 Cents Party” .