Dam Burst Tool Disables China's Green Dam Censorware

An anonymous reader writes "The infamous Green Dam censorship software has suffered yet another blow. As ZDNet explains, Dam Burst, a tool released by security researcher Jon Oberheide, allows unprivileged users to disable the censorware by removing the hooks that enable it to monitor and block user activity, effectively restoring running applications to their original uncensored state. While the Dam Burst software is currently available at Oberheide's website, community mirrors will undoubtedly be necessary to avoid blocking by the Great Firewall."

Comments

Re:Why so complicated?

[oahazmatt]

Can't you just install a clean OS?

C'mon. This is China. It's not like you can just walk to a street corner and get a copy of XP.

but you'd still be doing something illegal

[lapsed]

If Green Dam software were required in China (and it's not yet clear that it will be), disabling it might be trivial but the act of disabling it would open the user to prosecution. A Chinese user could 'accidentally' click on a site they should not have seen but it's hard to see disabling Green Dam software as anything but deliberate. Having said that, I think Oberheide's work is commendable.

How do I get Green Dam?

[Runaway1956]

"As a pleasant side effect, disabling the Green Dam components within a running process actually increases the security of the end host as the vulnerable code paths within the Green Dam software are no longer exploitable by an attacker. "

That being true, I want to install Green Dam so that I can use Dam Burst. Awesome!! Our benevolent brothers in China have helped to make teh intartubez secure!!!