[liberationtech] Cryptocat Censored in China

[Ralph Holz]

Hi,

FWIW, our PKI site with our measurements and data sets gets reported as
"100% blocked" by GreatFire. ;) I wonder how I should interpret that. ;)

https://en.greatfire.org/search/all/https%3A//pki.net.in.tum.de

Ralph

On 12/23/2012 04:28 AM, Martin Johnson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm the founder of GreatFire.org. Let me try to explain how we run our
> tests. I'd very much like to get your feedback on how our system can
> become more accurate and transparent.
> 
> The two Crypto.cat URLs being tested can be viewed here:
> https://en.greatfire.org/https/project.crypto.cat
> https://en.greatfire.org/https/blog.crypto.cat
> 
> Both pages state that the URLs are "x% restricted in China" but "0%
> blocked". Next to the "Otherwise restricted" label, there's a link to
> "Throttling" explaining our definition which in turn refers
> to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_throttling. A throttled
> websites is slow but not blocked. Labeling it as throttled also suggests
> that it's intentionally slow, which we cannot prove. A lot of foreign
> websites are slow in China, but there are big differences. For example,
> we strongly suspect that GMail and other Google services are actively
> throttled, to discourage people from using them. Other websites could
> simply be slow because of where they are hosted and the speed from China
> to that web host.
> 
> On our test pages, if you click on any date in the calendar, you can
> view our detailed test data. You can for example see that the "Host IPs"
> for Crypto.cat returned when tested from the US and different locations
> in China are the same. You can also verify the HTML title and the
> download size, etc.
> 
> Crypto.cat is not blocked in China now, but if it becomes popular, it
> will most likely be blocked. If they use DNS poisoning you'd have to
> setup mirror websites. If they block the IP, however, you can rotate the
> IP addresses to get around it. We offer a service that does this
> at https://unblock.cn.com and we'd be happy to help you reach as many
> users as possible in China.
> 
> Feedback very welcome.
> 
> Martin Johnson
> ---
> https://FreeWeibo.com <https://freeweibo.com/> - Uncensored, Anonymous
> Sina Weibo Search.
> https://GreatFire.org <https://greatfire.org/> - Monitoring Online
> Censorship In China.
> https://Unblock.cn.com <https://unblock.cn.com/> - We Can Unblock Your
> Website In China.
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 1:04 AM, Joss Wright
> <joss-liberationtech at pseudonymity.net
> <mailto:joss-liberationtech at pseudonymity.net>> wrote:
> 
>     On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 05:48:34PM +0100, Ralph Holz wrote:
>     >
>     > PS: While I was at it, I checked the current DNS rewriting for
>     > twitter.com <http://twitter.com>. It still points to a Korean IP.
> 
>     Some of the more fun DNS poisoning in my experiments[1] were >=15
>     apparently unrelated servers across China all redirecting
>     torproject.org <http://torproject.org>
>     to 'tonycastro.net <http://tonycastro.net>' or 'tonycastro.com
>     <http://tonycastro.com>', and a separate set redirecting
>     to 'thepetclubfl.net <http://thepetclubfl.net>'.
> 
>     A New Scientist journalist wrote up that work[2] and contacted both
>     sites. Tony Castro[3] instantly threatened to sue everyone in sight for
>     implying that he was a Chinese sleeper agent. The Pet Club webmaster had
>     noticed the Chinese traffic and was interested to know where it had come
>     from. :) (I suggested setting up a few China-focused pay-per-view
>     adverts.)
> 
>     Joss
> 
>     [1]
>     http://www.slideshare.net/josswright/through-a-router-darkly-remote-investigation-of-chinese-internet-f
>     [1b
>     <http://www.slideshare.net/josswright/through-a-router-darkly-remote-investigation-of-chinese-internet-f
>     [1b>]
>     http://www.pseudonymity.net/~joss/doc/work/presentation/2012/10/wright-censormap.pdf
>     (Original)
>     [2]
>     http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628936.300-florida-pet-spa-mystery-link-to-chinas-great-firewall.html
>     (Requires registration.)
>     [3] http://tonycastro.net/ (A life story worth Googling...)
> 
>     --
>     Joss Wright | @JossWright
>     http://www.pseudonymity.net
>     --
>     Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at:
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> 
> 
> 
> --
> Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
> 


-- 
Ralph Holz
Network Architectures and Services
Technische Universität München
Phone +49 89 28918043
http://www.net.in.tum.de/de/mitarbeiter/holz/
PGP: A805 D19C E23E 6BBB E0C4  86DC 520E 0C83 69B0 03EF