Chinese Censor-Beating Software Resembles Malware, But Isn't

coondoggie writes "Software designed to beat Chinese censorship may behave in ways that seem suspect, but it is all part of the application's strategy to fool the Great Firewall of China, according to one programmer of the software. 'There are many built-in tricks that do all kinds of things to confuse the firewall,' says David Tian, a scientist for NASA who works spare-time on UltraSurf, the free software designed to promote unrestricted Internet access for citizens of China persecuted for being members of Falun Gang, the religious group the Chinese government is trying to suppress."

Comments

Re:Confuse it? How?

[girlintraining]

It sends out search based noise and obfuscation by making randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN..

*face palm* Googling "how do I blow up government buildings" is going to attract the attention of shub internet no matter how many bogus queries you put before or after it. Most filtering schemes are based on content -- they don't care to do statistical analysis. You're just not that important. All they need to hang you is proof you visited a certain website or looked for certain terms. For example, if I typ[$)%(T^NO CARRIER

Re:Falun Gang

[rchh]

I am currently in China and the Internet censoring is not as bad as I had thought. I can open most websites, including BBC and New York Times. Most online proxies work. I can read any article from wikipedia- including that of Falun Gong ,Tibet and Human Rights.The most notable failures are Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch websites. Maybe I can read most websites because they are in English?