Background unclear: Great Firewall briefly cut China off from the Internet
Beijing uses the Great Firewall to control what people in China see online. Early on Wednesday, it temporarily cut almost all connections.
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The Chinese internet was largely cut off from the rest of the internet for just over an hour on Wednesday night, but the reasons behind this are unclear. This has been made public by a group called the "Great Firewall Report", which has set itself the task of monitoring China's internet censorship. According to a detailed analysis, China's Great Firewall blocked all connections on TCP port 443 for exactly one hour and 14 minutes between shortly after midnight on Wednesday morning. This resulted in massive disruptions between the Chinese network and those in the rest of the world. Either a new device that was installed in the censorship system or a known device that worked differently or incorrectly was responsible.
Many unanswered questions
According to the group's statements, it has confirmed the blockade in various ways. It turned out that only one specific TCP port was affected. Other common TCP ports were therefore accessible, but a scan of all available ports without exception could no longer be completed because the block had already been lifted. What exactly was responsible for the temporary loss of connection is completely unknown, and Chinese authorities will certainly not comment on this. Internet connections are occasionally blocked in the People's Republic to disrupt the exchange of information on certain topics among the population. So far, however, there is no evidence of such an event. A test run or a mistake is therefore conceivable.
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The "Great Firewall" is the name given to a complex system of internet censorship in China, which the government uses not only to prevent access to certain websites –, such as newspapers –, but also for domestic censorship. It is also responsible for domestic censorship. The analysis of the Great Firewall Report now points out that different components of the Great Firewall are responsible for different tasks. All of them have certain fingerprints and can be identified by them. In the case of the blockade now observed, however, none of these fingerprints were found. On a GitHub page about the incident, it is also pointed out that there have been Internet problems in Pakistan almost all the time. The country wants to set up a similar censorship system with Chinese help.
(mho)
