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China Blocks WhatsApp (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: China has blocked WhatsApp, security experts confirmed today to The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled). Over the past few months, WhatsApp has experienced brief disruptions to service, with users unable to send video chats or photos. Now, even text messages are completely blocked, according to Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Symbolic Software, a Paris-based research firm that also monitors digital censorship in China. Kobeissi found that China may have recently upgraded its firewall to detect and block the NoiseSocket protocol that WhatsApp uses to send texts, in addition to already blocking the HTTPS/TLS that WhatsApp uses to send photos and videos. He said, "I think it took time for the Chinese firewall to adapt to this new protocol so that it could also target text messages." His company noticed the app disruptions beginning last Wednesday.

2 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Re: alternatives? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Last time I checked ssh out of China was throttled to the point of connection time outs.

  2. Re:That's because China is a LUDDITE country! by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, it has a lot more to do with government officials being enriched by local companies who want to compete with whatsapp. Pay off enough cronies and their service gets blocked. They've had the tech to block it for a while. This has happened time and again to popular non-Chinese internet services and applications. Why ascribe to "luddite" behavior what can more easily explained by plain old greed and corruption.