Chinese Censorship Filter Rife with Security Holes

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» 12 June 2009

Just because it's called a filter doesn't mean it should be full of holes. In any case, the Chinese government's censorware project could compromise the very security of the PCs it was tasked to protect from pornography and illicit material. According to Internet privacy activists and security observers, China's "Green Dam-Youth Escort" software poses a significant security risk to all those who are forced to install the application.

Even though the majority of China's youth won't be able to view adult content via the Internet thanks to the mandated censorship program and the great firewall of China that's already in place, this mandatory security hazard could also cause them to not view anything else since the software is practically hacker bait.

An earlier news article of ours revealed that all PCs exported to China from July 1 this year onwards will be obligated to attach a domestically made program that will impede access to what the Chinese government deems as harmful content, which may or may not include all references to the Tiananmen Square incident and pornography.

To be more specific, the parental control application that was developed by Jinhui Computer System Engineering will be employed to prevent people from accessing adult-oriented and politically scandalous material in conjunction with existing web-host-level and server-side filters.

By monopolizing (or at the very least influencing) the kind of Internet content its constituents are allowed to view via Green Dam, the Chinese authorities are practically inviting hackers to make use of the buggy application as a means to breach into millions of Chinese computer systems.

For instance, a multitude of PCs could be transformed into a huge malware botnet via remote code injection. A more subtle hacking approach of using unsuspecting Green-Dam-exposed PCs as launching pads for acts of cyber terrorism against governments like the U.S. could also be done.

One other flaw of Green Dam that makes it seem like a very expensive exercise in futility is the fact that early versions of the program only work in Google Chrome or Internet Explorer on the Windows operating system. What that means is that, up until an upgrade is done, all a Chinese citizen needs to do to bypass the locally installed censorware is to either use a Mac and browse with Safari or use Firefox in Windows-enabled systems, among many other alternatives.

Speaking of Firefox, there have also been reports of the program being a high-maintenance resource hog that's unstable enough to accidentally block, say, course-related content from schools. That's quite a troublesome program for something that's supposed to just be a filter.

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