China's Internet Censorship Report 2006

Censorship is as bad, as looking directly into the sun which causes blindness, and still remains the among the few key prerequisites for successfully running a modern communism type of government, namely the leader's appearance. And while it's obvious that wearing eyeglasses is supposedly making you look smarter, I'm certain that it's not reading on candles, but censorship that's causing the overal blindness of party members on average.

Human Rights Watch recently reseased a very comprehensive report on China's Internet censorship philosophy, technologies, social implications and the business parties involved.

Meanwhile, the blocked since 2002 Blogger.com seems to be again accessible in China. A battle victory for free speech? Don't be naive, the reason it's still accessible is that they figured out how to censor what needs to be censored -- reverse model consisting of allowing everything, and blocking as well as monitoring access to potentially dangerous blogs. Less negative public opinion for sure, a good indication on why the Great Firewall has the potential to get breached into from within. Here are key summaries of what made me an impression:

01. URL de-listing on Google.cn, Yahoo! China, MSN Chinese and Baidu

02. Comparative keyword searches on Google.cn, Yahoo! China, MSN China, Baidu, Yahoo.com, MSN search and Google.com

03. The words you never see in Chinese cyberspace - courtesy of Chinese hackers located a document within the installation package of QQ instant messaging software :

falun, sex, tianwang, cdjp, av, bignews, boxun, chinaliberal, chinamz, chinesenewsnet, cnd, creaders, dafa, dajiyuan, dfdz, dpp, falu, falun, falundafa, flg, freechina, freedom, freenet, GCD, gcd , hongzhi , hrichina , huanet , hypermart , incest , jiangdongriji , lihongzhi ,making , minghui , minghuinews , nacb , naive , nmis , paper , peacehall , playboy , renminbao , renmingbao , rfa , safeweb, sex , simple , svdc , taip , tibetalk , triangle , triangleboy , UltraSurf , unixbox , ustibet , voa, voachinese, wangce, wstaiji, xinsheng, yuming, zhengjian, zhengjianwang, zhenshanren, zhuanfalun

04. The Great Firewall of China: Keywords used to filter web content :

Names of People
Bao Tong, Chen Yonglin, Cui Yingjie, Ding Jiaban, Du Zhaoyong, Gao Jingyun, Gao Zhisheng, He Jiadong, He Weifang, Hu Xingdou, Hu Yuehua, Hua Guofeng, Huang Jingao, Jiang Mianheng, Jiang Yanyong, Jiang Zemin, Jiao Guobiao, Jin Zhong, Li Zhiying, Liang Yuncai, Liu Jianfeng, Liu Junning, Liu Xiabobo, Nie Shubin, Nie Shubin (repeated),Sun Dawu, Wang Binyu, Wang Lixiong, Xu Zhiyong, Yang Bin, Yang Dongping, Yu Jie, Zhang Weiying, Zhang Xingshui, Zhang Zuhua,Zhao Yan, Zhou Qing, Zhu Chenghu, Zhu Wenhu, Zi Yang (in English), Ziyang (in Chinese), Ziyang (in English), zzy (in English, abbreviation for Zhao Ziyang)

Chinese Politics
17th party congress, Babaoshan,Beat [overthrow] the Central Propaganda Department, Blast the Central Propaganda Department, Block the road and demand back pay, Chief of the Finance Bureau, Children of high officials, China liberal (in English), Chinese Communist high officials, Denounce the Central Propaganda Department, Down with the Central Propaganda Department, Impeach, Lin Zhao Memorial Award, Patriots Alliance, Patriots Alliance (abbreviated), Patriots Alliance Web, Police chase after and kill police, Pollution lawsuit, Procedures for dismissing an official, Red Terror, Set fires to force people to relocate, Sons of high officials, The Central Propaganda Department is the AIDS of Chinese society, Villagers fight with weapons, Wang Anshi’s reform and the fall of the Northern Song dynasty, Specific Issues and Events, Buy corpses, Cadres transferred from the military, Cashfiesta (English), Cat abuse, Changxin Coal Mountain, China Youth Daily staff evaluation system, Chinese orphanage, Chinese Yangshen Yizhi Gong, Demobilized soldiers transferred to other industries, Dongyang, Dongzhou, Fetus soup, Foot and mouth disease, Fuzhou pig case, Gaoxin Hospital, High-speed train petition, Hire a killer to murder one’s wife, Honghai Bay, Horseracing, Jinxin Pharmaceutical, Kelemayi, Linyi family planning, Market access system, Mascot, Military wages, No Friendlies, Prosecutor committed suicide, Pubu Ravine, Shanwei government, Suicide of deputy mayor, Suicide of Kuerle mayor, Swiss University of Finance, Taishi village, Top ten worst cities, Wanzhou, Weitan [Village], Zhang Chunxian welcomes supervision against corruption, Falun Gong

Terms related to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, including phrases from its “NineCommentaries” manifesto against the Communist Party
Chinese Communist Party brutally kills people, dajiyuan (in English), Defy the heavens, earth and nature. Mao Zedong, Epoch Times, Epoch Times (written with a different character), Epoch Times news Web site, Evaluate the Chinese Communist Party, Evaluate the Chinese Communist Party (abbreviated), falundafa (in English), flg (in English), Fozhan Qianshou Fa, Guantong Liangji Fa, In the Chinese Communist Party, common standards of humanity don’t exist, Li Hongzhi, lihongzhi (in English), Master Li, minghui (in English), Mother and daughter accused each other, and students and teachers became enemies, New Tang dynasty TV Station, Nine Commentaries, No. 1 evil cult in the world, Obedient citizens under its brutal rule, People become brutal in violence, Chinese Communist Party, People developed a concept of the Chinese Communist Party, but, People who could escape have escaped, and had people to seek refuge with, Quit the party, Run the opposite direction of the so-called ideals of Communism, Shenzhou Jiachifa, Spring Festival Gala of the World’s Chinese, Steal people’s painstaking work, Truth, Compassion, Tolerance [Falungong slogan], Zhenshanren (in English) [same slogan in English]

Overseas Web Sites, Publications and Dissident Groups
Century China Foundation, China Issues Forum, China Renaissance Forum, China Society Forum, China Spring, Chinese Current Affairs, Chinese World Forum, EastSouthWestNorth Forum, EastWestSouthNorth Forum, Forum of Wind, Rain and the Divine Land, Freedom and Democracy Forum, Freedom to Write Award, Great China Forum, Han Style, Huatong Current Affairs Forum, Huaxia Digest, Huayue Current Affairs Forum, Independent Chinese PEN Center, Jimaoxin Collection, Justice Party Forum, New Birth Web, New Observer Forum, North American Freedom Forum, reminbao (in English), remingbao (in English), Small Reference, Spring and Summer Forum, Voice of the People Forum, Worldwide Reader Forum, You Say I Say Forum, Zhengming Forum, Zhidian Jiangshan Forum, Zhongshan Wind and Rain Forum

Taiwan
Establish Taiwan Country Movement Organization, Great President Chen Shui-bian, Independent League of Taiwan Youth, Independent Taiwan Association, New Party, Taiwan Freedom League, Taiwan Political Discussion Zone

Ethnic Minorities
East Turkestan, East Turkestan (abbreviated), Han-Hui conflicts [ethnic conflicts], Henan Zhongmu, Hui [muslim ethnic minority] rebellion, Hui village, Langcheng Gang, Nancheng Gang, Nanren Village, Tibet independence, Xinjiang independence, Zhongmu County

Tiananmen Square
Memoirs of June 4 participants, Redress June 4, Tiananmen videotape, Tiananmen incident, Tiananmen massacre, Tiananmen generation, World Economic Herald

Censorship
Cleaning and rectifying Web sites, China’s true content, Internet commentator, News blockade

International
Indonesia, North Korea falls out with China, Paris riots, Tsunami

Other
Armageddon, Bomb, Bug, Handmade pistol, Nuclear bomb, Wiretap, Chinese People Tell the Truth, Chinese People Justice and Evil, China Social Progressive Party, Chinese Truth Report, Dazhong Zhenren Zhenshi, Jingdongriji (English), Night talk of the Forbidden City, People’s Inside Information and Truth

Take your time to understand the Twisted Reality courtesy of China's Internet Censorship efforts, and learn more on how to undermine censorship.

Related resources and recent posts:
Censorship
China's Interest of Censoring Mobile Communications
South Korea's View on China's Media Control and Censorship

Malware Statistics on Social Networking Sites

Huge traffic aggregators such as the majority of social networking sites,attract not only huge percentage of the Internet's population on a regular basis, but also malware authors taking advantage of the medium as an infection vector -- and why not as a propagation one as well?

ScanSafe just came up with some nice stats on the average number of social networking pages hosting malware - based on five billion web requests, there's one piece of malware hosted in 600 social networking pages :

"According to an analysis of more than five billion Web requests in July, ScanSafe found that on average, up to one in 600 profile pages on social-networking sites hosted some form of malware. The company also reported that the use of social-networking sites, often assumed to be popular only with teens, accounted for approximately 1 percent of all Web use in the workplace. “Social-networking sites have been newsworthy because of the concern over our children’s safety, but beyond unsafe contact with harmful adults, these sites are an emerging and potentially ripe threat vector that can expose children to harmful software,” said Eldar Tuvey, CEO and co-founder, ScanSafe. “Users are frequently subject to unwanted spyware and adware that can compromise their PCs, track online behavior and degrade PC performance.”

SpiDynamics recent research into Detecting, Analyzing, and Exploiting Intranet Applications using JavaScript , Hacking RSS and Atom Feed Implementations, and the countless web application vulnerabilities in popular portals turn this into a malware author's wet dream come true. You can also go through my key points on web application malware I made at the beginning of 2006, the "best" is yet to come.

Related resources and posts:
Malware
Malware Targets Social Networks - podcast
The Current State of Web Application Worms
Web Application Email Harvesting Worm

Analyzing the Intelligence Analysts' Factors of Productivity

Outstanding perspective, given the author is an ex-CIA analyst himself. Controversial to the common wisdom of a Project Manhattan type of departamental seperation -- everyone's working to achieve the same goal, whereas no one knows what the others are doing -- there's a growing trend of better analyzing and responding to an intelligence analyst's productivity needs. Watchin' the Analysts greatly descibes the Intelligence Community's efforts to sense and respond to these growing trends of collaboration, in between figuring out how to balance the possible security implications. Great reading, especially the infamous news headline on how the CIA got "hacked" through an internal unofficial communication chat room, one that they were unaware of by the time. The paper discusses LinkedIn, Del.icio.us, Blogs, and highlights the basic truth that "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Meta..", an excerpt :

"Analysts interact among themselves, as a complex community web of knowledge. Analysis of those sorts of networks would be worthwhile, and is being done in the commercial sector, through a variety of tools. In the fall of 2000, the CIA shut down a so-called “chat room” operating unofficially over Agency networks; four employees lost their jobs, with other employees and contractors given reprimands. I had left the Agency in 1994, but numerous of those involved were friends and former colleagues. My impression was that what occurred was more embarrassing than threatening, and that agency management ought to understand how and why such virtual communities form—whether they’re facilitated or frustrated by the “official” infrastructure—and appreciate their value. Various network visualization tools would have readily revealed anomalous (at least as far as official business was concerned) traffic, but analysts will want and need an environment that fosters creativity and community, and ought to be given one."

However, there's a certain degree of internal censorship going on, the way employers often have strict guidelines on employees blogging activities, the CIA recently fired an analyst over an internal blog posting related to the Geneva Convention and torture. Risk management solutions, besides visualization are, of course, taking place as well.

Related resources and posts:
Intelligence
Visualization, Intelligence and the Starlight Project
"IM me" a strike order
Covert Competitive Intelligence
India's Espionage Leaks
Japan's Reliance on U.S Spy Satellites and Early Warning Missile Systems

AOL's Search Leak User 4417749 Identified

A Chief Privacy Officer and basic common sense anyone?

As you all know, during the weekend 20M search queries of 650,000 AOL users leaked, and are all over the Internet available for download. It's simple unbeliavable that the only measure to ensure the privacy of the data was the "unique ID", and how often does the excuse of improving search results pop out. No need for subpoenas this time, but basic use of filtering techniques.

Seems like AOL searcher 4417749 has been identified by a NYtimes reporter :

"Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher’s anonymity, but it was not much of a shield. No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from “numb fingers” to “60 single men” to “dog that urinates on everything.” And search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No. 4417749 became easier to discern. There are queries for “landscapers in Lilburn, Ga,” several people with the last name Arnold and “homes sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia.” It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends’ medical ailments and loves her three dogs. “Those are my searches,” she said, after a reporter read part of the list to her."

Hope AOL gets to win the Big Brother Awards, nominated for sure.

Related resources and posts:
Privacy
Still worry about your search history and BigBrother?
The Feds, Google, MSN's reaction, and how you got "bigbrothered"?
What search engines know, or may find out about us?
Security vs Privacy or what's left from it
Snooping on Historical Click Streams
Brace Yourself - AOL to Enter Security Business