China tightens grip on internet access with crackdown on VPNs
A CHINESE telecoms carrier has begun closing virtual private networks (VPNs) and other tools that can bypass the so-called Great Firewall, which authorities use to filter and block traffic between Chinese and overseas servers.
A spokesman for Guangzhou Huoyun Information Technology, which operates in around 20 cities across China, told Reuters the company received a directive from authorities to start blocking services from Tuesday.
Enlisting telecoms firms will extend China’s control of its cyberspace – which it believes should mimic realworld border controls and be subject to the same laws as sovereign states.
While the Great Firewall blocks access to overseas sites, the telecoms firms can filter and censor online access at a more granular level, in the home and on smartphones.
“The telcos have methods at their disposal that the Great Firewall may not,” said Philip Molter, chief technology officer at Golden Frog, which operates VyprVPN, a popular VPN in China. “Because these routers deal with far less traffic, they can block more aggressively using more resource intensive methods.”
The telecoms firms have taken up their new filtering roles under a law introduced in January, and set to come into full effect next March. Experts say this could lead to increasingly targeted attacks on VPNs, one of the few tools Chinese can use to access overseas internet services.
A member of Chinabased anti-censorship site GreatFire.org, who goes by the pseudonym of Charlie Smith, said the authorities were shifting responsibility to the telecoms firms. “This is a major step towards closing whatever windows are still left open,” he said.
Dozens of popular China-based VPNs have been shut down in recent weeks, with rolling attacks on overseas VPNs. This week, users also reported partial blocks and delays in the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp, the latest western social media tool to be hit. And researchers found that messages related to Liu Xiaobo, a dissident and Nobel laureate who died from cancer in custody last week, disappeared from local messaging apps.
VPN services say they are bracing for further blocks in the run-up to this autumn’s Communist Party Congress.
President Xi Jinping, who has overseen a marked sharpening of China’s cyberspace controls, including tough new data surveillance and censorship rules, is expected to consolidate his hold on power at the Congress, which takes place every five years.
The January regulations make telecoms providers and other internet service providers (ISPs) liable for filtering and blocking unlawful network tools, according to the Ministry of Information Industry and Technology (MIIT).
Experts say firms could bar a range of services, and even prevent mobile apps from being installed.
Yet, authorities will likely struggle to put up the blanket safeguards necessary to cripple foreign VPNs by
March, experts say.
“There’s been an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse with China and VPNs... we’re optimistic that VPNs will continue to be accessible from China for the foreseeable future,” said a spokesman for Express VPN, noting its user numbers continue to grow in China.
“These newest measures are one more hurdle for Chinese users to jump, in what is turning out to be an extremely long steeplechase,” said GreatFire.org’s Smith. (Reuters)