 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. (January 2022) |
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The Great Cannon of China is an Internet attack tool that is used by the Chinese government to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks on websites by performing a man-in-the-middle attack on large amounts of web traffic and injecting code which causes the end-user's web browsers to flood traffic to targeted websites.[1] According to the researchers at the Citizen Lab, the International Computer Science Institute, and Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy, who coined the term, the Great Cannon hijacks foreign web traffic intended for Chinese websites and re-purposes them to flood targeted web servers with enormous amounts of traffic in an attempt to disrupt their operations. While it is co-located with the Great Firewall, the Great Cannon is "a separate offensive system, with different capabilities and design."[2]
Besides launching denial-of-service attacks, the tool is also capable of monitoring web traffic[3] and distributing malware in targeted attacks in ways that are similar to the Quantum Insert system used by the U.S. National Security Agency.[4]
- ^ Perlroth, Nicole (April 10, 2015). "China Is Said to Use Powerful New Weapon to Censor Internet". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 11, 2015. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
- ^ Marczak, Bill; Weaver, Nicolas; Dalek, Jakub; Ensafi, Roya; Fifield, David; McKune, Sarah; Rey, Arn; Scott-Railton, John; Deibert, Ronald; Paxson, Vern (April 10, 2015). "China's Great Cannon". The Citizen Lab. Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Canada. Archived from the original on April 10, 2015. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
- ^ Franceschi-Bicchierai, Lorenzo (April 10, 2015). "The 'Great Cannon' is China's Powerful New Hacking Weapon". Motherboard - Vice. Vice Media LLC. Archived from the original on April 12, 2015. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
- ^ Stone, Jeff (April 10, 2015). "China's 'Great Cannon' Lets Internet Censors Hack Sites Abroad – Just Ask GitHub". International Business Times. IBT Media Inc. Archived from the original on April 10, 2015. Retrieved April 10, 2015.