World misunderstands China's Web controls: expert
100664
The Internet in China is not as  restricted as sometimes believed in the West, with most  controls actually coming from sites practicing self-censorship,  an academic who studies the Chinese Web said on Thursday.
250938
The great firewall of China often fails to block banned words finds a US study of its effectiveness.
580149
Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai said attempts to access Google&#160;and other search engines were successful Friday, despite claims on a U.S. blog that traffic to these&#160;sites was redirected&#160;to Chinese search engine Baidu.com.The claim first surfaced on TechCrunch, a U.S. blog that largely covers Internet startups before being picked up by other sites. The headline of that post alleged &quot;Baidu hijacking Google traffic In China,&quot; but offered no evidence to prove the claim apart from an undated, modified screenshot showing Baidu&#39;s Web page below the URL for Google Blogsearch.In a follow-up post, TechCrunch said &quot;new reports have surfaced that would indicate that China has unilaterally blocked all three major search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu.&quot; That report cited posts on other blogs, where users claimed to have been redirected from U.S. search sites to Baidu.A Google spokeswoman in Beijing did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.However, several Internet users -- four in Beijing and two in Shanghai -- reported on Friday morning that search engines operated by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, including Google Blogsearch, one of the sites reportedly most affected, were accessible. Attempts to reach these sites had not been redirected to Baidu, they said.Internet censorship is a serious problem in China, and regulators routinely&#160;block access to sites&#160;with content they don&#39;t like. But Chinese officials very rarely comment on censorship efforts, making it difficult for users to determine when a site has been blocked or is inaccessible for other reasons.Timing can be an important factor, with Chinese censors blocking access to some Web sites around politically sensitive dates, such as the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the Chinese Communist Party Congress, a political confab held once every five years to choose top leaders and set policy that is now underway in Beijing.Access to a search engine can also be blocked if a user searches for a politically sensitive word, such as a search for information on the banned Falungong religious sect.Tracking the ebb and flow of censorship efforts can be a challenge, as access to sites can be blocked and opened, seemingly by whim. On Wednesday, Wikipedia remained blocked in China and access to YouTube was shut off. But censors eased off on other sites, opening up access to Google&#39;s Blogspot blogging service and permitting users to view pictures on Flickr, which had been blocked even though the site was accessible in China.Even when Web sites are accessible in China, there can be moments when sites cannot be reached. For example, one of the Chinese Internet users in Beijing contacted for this story said he was unable to reach Google.com three days ago. Attempts to reach the site were not redirected to Baidu, and Google has been accessible during the last couple of days, he said.While the Chinese government may not be redirecting search-engine traffic to Baidu, censors did this in 2002, just before the previous Party Congress opened in Beijing. At that time, censors cut off access to Google and redirected traffic to several local search engines, including Baidu. However, the rerouting did not affect all users and did not appear to be done at a national level, analysts said at that time.&#160;
86315
The security vendor has fixed the damage, but the site briefly redirected visitors to a malicious site in China.
77970
It is the news that internet users do not want to hear: the worldwide web is in danger of collapsing around us. Patrick Gelsinger, the chief technology officer for computer chip maker Intel, told a conference
101612
It is the news that Internet users do not want to hear: the worldwide web is in danger of collapsing around us. Patrick Gelsinger, the chief technology officer for computer chip maker Intel, told a conference
616652
China should pay more attention to shoring up its product safety supervision network rather than apportioning blame for recent problems, a senior European Union official said on Wednesday.
689638
(InfoWorld) - China is proving to be a mighty force not only economically, but also as the launching point for malicious software and spam. In June, some 40 percent of malicious software worldwide originated from Beijing, nearly doubling from 21 percent in May, said Simon Heron, managing director for security vendor Network Box. Spam from Beijing, however, dropped from 11 percent to 5 percent over the same time period, he said. Beijing kept the number one spot for malware, followed by Wattleup, Australia, at 3.7 percent, and Madrid, Spain, at 2.5 percent, according to Network Box. The percentage is calculated from event logs transmitted by about 700 customers using Network Box's security appliance, which has a firewall along with antispam, antivirus, antiphishing, and content filtering technologies. The company catches about 4 million samples of malicious software a day. As more and more users come online in China, there's a good chance those computers are using pirated software without up-to-date security fixes, making them prime targets for hackers who are actually located elsewhere in the world, Heron said. Those compromised computers, which are used to send spam and make it more difficult to identify the spammer, are so valuable that hacker gangs have been competing to take over machines, Heron said. If one gang finds a machine running another gang's Trojan horse program -- one that appears harmless to the victim but can be used to control a machine -- they'll try to remove the software. "If you finally have your Trojan onto a system, you donât really want it running somebody else's software because there's a better chance the user will realize it and do something about it," Heron said. "I guess thereâs no honor amongst thieves." Â
647937
Google&#39;s recently launched news service in China doesn&#39;t display results from Web sites blocked by that country&#39;s authorities, raising prickly questions
676810
HANGZHOU, China -- In spring 2006, an essay appeared on the Internet detailing collusion between the Chinese government's food and drug watchdog agency and a pharmaceutical venture. It accused the country's highest-ranking regulator of accepting a lakeside house and hundreds of thousands of dollars...
228435
Repent of your public networks, says web guru
764440
(InfoWorld) - China is seeking to put technical Internet management issues on the agenda of the next Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting, a U.N.-run forum concerning the development of the Internet. IGF is a forum for countries and other stakeholders to exchange ideas about key Internet issues. China appears poised to raise issues that have put it at loggerheads with the United States, which has been consistently criticized forÂ wielding too much influence over the Internet. However, there are no specific plans for how the issues raised by China may be addressed, said Markus Kummer, executive coordinator for the secretariat of the IGF, on Tuesday in London. "We are going to discuss critical Internet resources, but we haven't framed the discussion yet," Kummer said. IGF's next meeting, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in November, will broadly cover four subject areas: access, openness, security and diversity. A Chinese representative asserted about two weeks ago that last year's IGF meeting in Athens missed discussion of key issues. "Still, there are some critical issues that were missing at the meeting," the Chinese representative said, according to a transcript on the IGF Web site. "For instance, issues like the DNS root servers and IP address." Root servers manage the Domain Name System, which enables the translation of a Web site name, such as www.idg.com, to a numerical Internet Protocol address used to find where the Web page is hosted for viewing in a browser. Kummer stressed that IGF is not a policy-making body and said there are "widely divergent expectations" about its role. IGF doesn't have binding power to regulate the Internet worldwide, but it can provide an international stage to discuss issues, Kummer said. "Negotiating a treaty takes a long time, and it is only as good as the weakest link in the chain," Kummer said. It would appear countries such as China are hoping IGF will be a stage for more controversial issues. China, along with other developing countries, has expressed concerned over the influence of the U.S. government as well as the physical location of much of the Internet's core infrastructure in the U.S., such as root servers. To accommodate an ever-increasing number of Internet users, China is also seeking to increase its allocation of IP addresses, an essential numerical identifier for a computer or devices to connect to the Internet. The U.S. has generally opposed management changes or adjustments in the Internet's infrastructure, saying it could undermine its stability and security.
625230
'You will use Baidu' It looks like China is hijacking web traffic from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!.â¦
386296
The facts of web servers don't necessarily match the myths when it comes to security.
742663
The number of Internet users in China soared past 200 million in 2007, a new report from the country&#39;s quasi-government Internet overseer said Thursday.China&#39;s Internet population&#160;stood at 210 million at the end of last year, up 53 percent from the same time in 2006 when there were 137 million, the China Internet Network Information Centre said in its semi-annual report on Internet use here.That figure puts China just 5 million users away from becoming the world&#39;s largest wired nation -- and with only about 16 percent of the population online. At its current growth rate, China will become the world&#39;s top Internet market sometime in the next few months.The greatest growth came from users under 18 and over 30, CNNIC said. One of the most surprising statistics from the new report indicates that about 40 percent of users added over the last year, over 29 million, came from rural areas. Even in the January 2007 report, the vast majority of Chinese Netizens were based in major urban areas such as Beijing and Shanghai.Also surprising among the new results is that China&#39;s most popular Internet application is online music, used by 86.6 percent of those surveyed, followed by instant messaging with 81 percent. E-mail placed only fifth, with 56.5 percent using it.CNNIC&#39;s survey provides the most reliable information about Internet use in China, although its methodology is translucent at best. It does not reveal its sample size, nor does it reveal what consists of an Internet user except that the person used the Internet at least once in the month prior to when the survey was taken.While the new statistics may seem impressive, it highlights how Internet usage in the country still lags behind mobile phone use, and how even greater usage could be spurred by more access through wireless devices. &quot;China&#39;s admittedly impressive user statistics hide an important fact: only a fraction of those users have regular access to a PC,&quot; said David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based technology consultancy.Despite limited PC access for some users, Chinese Internet users have embraced the Internet as a means of expression. &quot;In addition to an increase in overall numbers, you also see a rise in the number of Netizens creating content on BBS and blogs, making Chinese Netizens some of the most active participants in the Web 2.0 phenomena in the world,&quot; said Sam Flemming, founder and CEO of CIC, an Internet word of mouth monitoring firm based in Shanghai.
328423
The world's most advanced military powers are using the Internet to spy on their enemies and prepare digital attacks against rogue targets, a leading cyber security expert said on Friday.
437333
Business Software Alliance CEO Robert Holleyman says the Chinese are filled with misgivings about the world's view of it.