2003 January 14 Tuesday
Dweb.blogspot.com Singled Out By Chinese Govt

The Chinese government has blocked access to all of blogspot.

One explanation for the blockade suggested by a number of reports is that the entire site may have been blocked to prevent Chinese internet users reaching one blog in particular: dweb.blogspot.com. This site is has published lists of proxy servers that can be used to gain access to restricted web sites from within China.

Dweb presents evidence of that their subdomain was hijacked.

Besides IP blocking, China also hijacked the domain name "dweb.blogspot.com". (see http://www.dit-inc.us/hj-09-02.html for more details of the DNS hijacking.) However, other subdomains are not hijacked. This can be verified from outside China. Here is a screen output you can reproduce:
C:\>nslookup dweb.blogspot.com ns4.bta.net.cn
Server: ns4.bta.net.cn
Address: 202.106.0.20

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: dweb.blogspot.com
Address: 64.33.88.161

C:\>nslookup bill.blogspot.com ns4.bta.net.cn
Server: ns4.bta.net.cn
Address: 202.106.0.20

Name: bill.blogspot.com
Address: 64.41.146.221

C:\>nslookup blogspot.com ns4.bta.net.cn
Server: ns4.bta.net.cn
Address: 202.106.0.20

Name: blogspot.com
Address: 64.41.146.221

Here you can see that dweb.blogspot.com is the one Communist party pick up to be the most subversive among all bloggers to be on the DNS hijacking list.

In addition to blocking access to various sites on the web China even blocks the use of certain search terms on Google.

"If you enter one of these keywords, such as the Chinese president's name, you loose all IP connectivity for five minutes," Edelman told New Scientist. "I suspect they may have had this system in the wings all along."

Update: John Jay Ray reports that the Chinese block on Blogspot has been lifted.

Posted by Randall Parker at January 14, 2003 08:58 AM
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