A Tale of Two Leaks: How Hackers Breached the Great Firewall of China [video]
4 months ago
- #Great Firewall
- #Cybersecurity
- #Internet Censorship
- The Great Firewall of China (GFW) is one of the most advanced Internet censorship systems in the world.
- Censorship measurement involves both passive experimentation and active attacks against the GFW.
- A memory disclosure vulnerability named 'Wallbleed' was discovered in 2021, leaking sensitive data like HTTP cookies, URL parameters with passwords, and internal network traffic.
- Over two years, five billion responses were collected, revealing extensive data leaks, including real user traffic.
- The Wallbleed vulnerability was partially patched in September 2023, but a new version ('Wallbleed v2') was quickly found, persisting until March 2024.
- In September 2024, 600GB of leaked source code and documentation from Geedge Networks, a company linked to GFW, was released, providing new insights into censorship mechanisms.
- The leak revealed Geedge Networks develops censorship software for multiple repressive countries, including Pakistan, Myanmar, Kazakhstan, and Ethiopia.
- The findings highlight the importance of active censorship measurement research and call for action against Internet censorship.