For
years, a group of anonymous activists known as GreatFire.org has monitored online censorship in
China, provided access to blocked websites and collected messages deleted by
censors.
This
week, unidentified hackers have tried to put an end to those activists’ efforts
with an unprecedented attack. In a post
to its blog Thursday, GreatFire.org said it has experienced a massive so-called
denial of service attack.
The
method is one that hackers frequently use to foil websites by flooding them
with multiple requests — so many that they go offline and viewers see a
blank page. GreatFire.org creates encrypted versions of 12 websites that are
blocked in China. These are known as mirrored websites and grant users within
China access to the content.
On
Thursday, GreatFire.org said it was receiving 2.6 billion requests an hour for
its mirrored websites. On Friday, access to the mirrored websites was inconsistent
in China.
“We
are under attack and we need help,” GreatFire.org said. “This kind of attack is
aggressive and is an exhibition of censorship by brute force. Attackers resort
to tactics like this when they are left with no other options.”
Meanwhile,
the Reuters news agency
reported that its website was inaccessible in China on Friday. The
websites of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg have
previously been blocked in China.
“Reuters
is committed to practicing fair and accurate journalism worldwide,” said
Caroline Drees, a spokeswoman for Reuters.
GreatFire.org’s
name is inspired by the Great Firewall, the term often used to describe China’s
Internet censorship. About two million people in China access GreatFire’s
websites each month, a co-founder of the group who uses the pseudonym Charlie
Smith, wrote in an email exchange.
It
was unclear who was responsible for the attack, which began Tuesday from
inside and outside China, Mr. Smith wrote. GreatFire.org noted in its blog post
that its tactics were the recent subject of a report in
The Wall Street Journal, which appeared online Monday.
The
timing for the attack was a mystery. “Maybe that WSJ story,” Mr. Smith wrote.
“Maybe because there have been some excellent Chinese-language news pieces and
perhaps somebody who supports the authorities took issue with them. In the past
there has rarely been rhyme or reason on the timing of such attacks.”
GreatFire.org’s
mirroring services provide unrestricted access within China to a range of
websites, including itself and the Chinese language version of The New York
Times, which has been regularly blocked in China. Some of the others are
Deutsche Welle, BBC News, China Digital Times, Google.com, and Boxun, a
Chinese-language news website. GreatFire.org says it does not mirror The Wall
Street Journal. GreatFire.org works directly with some, but not all, of
the websites it mirrors.
GreatFire.org
is partly funded by Open Technology Fund, a United States government-financed
initiative under Radio Free Asia. Last year it provided $114,000 in funding, according
to its website. Mr. Smith declined to comment on any financial
backing.
The
Chinese government has in the last year ramped up efforts to prevent its
citizens from accessing critical news coverage from abroad and from
communicating on social media platforms that the government cannot directly
censor.
China
has long disrupted many of Google’s services. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube remain
blocked. LinkedIn agreed to censor its content to operate in the
Chinese market last year.
GreatFire’s
mirroring websites circumvent the Great Firewall by channeling Internet traffic
through cloud services, such as one available from Amazon. The difficulty
for the Chinese government is that it can’t just shut off Amazon’s service,
because it is used broadly by many major Chinese corporations.
Emails
to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Chinese embassy in Washington went
unanswered as of Friday evening. The Associated Press quoted Zhu Haiquan, a
spokesman for the embassy, as saying: ‘‘As we have always stated, Chinese laws
prohibit cybercrimes of all forms. The Chinese government is making great
efforts to combat cybercrimes and safeguard cybersecurity. Jumping to
conclusions and making unfounded accusations is not responsible and is
counterproductive.’’
The
hacking is costing GreatFire up to $30,000 per day in additional charges, Mr.
Smith wrote. However, he wrote that he was confident that the group’s services
would not be disrupted for good.
“The
authorities will not cut off access to the world’s Internet infrastructure
because they know that it is valuable,” Mr. Smith wrote. “If anything, this
should accelerate the development and deployment of collateral freedom as a
strategy to achieve freedom of access to information in countries like China.”
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