Protesters from Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) march to the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong to protest the United States government hacking into Hong Kong computers. (Photo : Reuters)
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Toronto in the U.S. claimed that China is using a powerful tool that could intercept Web traffic and redirect traffic where it desires to go.
Security reports last month showed that China flooded American websites with heavy Internet traffic with the intention to take out the services of websites that are otherwise blocked in China.
Initial reports said that China was able to cripple the services of the websites using the Great Firewall--China's own Internet filter--by redirecting huge amount of traffic to the target websites.
But researchers from the two U.S. universities said that China is not using the Great Firewall but rather the Great Cannon, a powerful new weapon, the New York Times reported.
According to the researchers' report published on April 10, Friday, the new tool enables China to intercept Internet traffic, insert malicious code and redirect it to their target sites.
The report said that the system intercepted the advertising traffic for Baidu, China's equivalent of Google, and re-directed it to GitHub, a programmers' site, and GreatFire.org, a site that has mirror images of sites blocked in China.
Though their operations seemed normal, the services of the two sites continued to be under attack until April 9, Thursday, the report said.
The researchers claimed that the Great Cannon could be used as a surveillance tool as they said that the infrastructure and code for the attacks are identical to the Great Firewall, although separate devices were used in the attacks.
The report said that China's new Internet weapon is similar to one used by the National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, GCHQ, based on classified documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former United States intelligence contractor.
According to the leaked documents, the American system can also intercept Web traffic on a mass scale and redirect it to a chosen site.
The report said that NSA uses the program for surveillance, while China uses the Great Cannon for censorship.
