Oops...
–DNS Error Extends Great Firewall of China
(25th March 2010)
Problems with a root DNS Server in China caused computers in the United
States and Chile to come under the control of the Great Firewall of
China, resulting in requests to sites such as Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube to be redirected to Chinese servers.
Once the server, operated
by the Swedish service provider Netnod, was disconnected from the
Internet, the problem was resolved. The problem was first noticed by
NIC Chile, that noticed that several ISPs were providing faulty DNS
information. China uses DNS to enforce its Great Firewall and somehow
the affected ISPs were using this DNS information. Netnod claims that
their server did not contain the faulty data that redirected traffic and
security experts believe that it must have been altered by the Chinese
government.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174278/After_DNS_problem_Chinese_root_server_is_shut_down
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-threats/2010/03/26/web-error-redirects-traffic-to-chinese-sites-40088453/
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174132/China_s_Great_Firewall_spreads_overseas?taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=1
[Editor's Note (Schultz): Depending on how you look at it, the
government of the People Republic of China is either a "good guy" or a
"bad guy." Either way, it is clear that this government excels in spying
on information from other countries far better than other countries spy
upon China.
(Northcutt): This is really worth your time to read and keep in mind
that you have a host table and it is consulted first by default on many
operating systems. Consider putting your VPN concentrator, mail server
etc in your host table. As I understand it, this is not such a new thing
for China, here is a similar event in 2002:
http://www.dit-inc.us/hj-09-02.html
And of course there was some discussion about filtering during the
Olympics in 2008:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/4504 ]
*Via SANS
