
China blocks the Guardian, censorship-tracking website says - teawithcarl
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/08/china-blocks-guardian-website
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veidr
This just in: oppressive totalitarian regime, having developed the widest-
ranging censorship capability in human history, censors another thing

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songgao
Just now? I thought all news sites that they can't control are already blocked
in some way. Some are keywords-triggered instead of fully blocked though.

There are always ways to "unblock" blocked websites. HTTPS (for anti-keyword-
filtering), SSH Tunnels, VPNs, Proxies, Tor, they all had their presence in
Chinese Internet history. And then the government are always able to either
block or weaken methods that unblock blocked websites. It's an endless battle
between the officials and citizens, or between dictatorship and freedom of
speech.

I'm getting really bored. Here in HN, I'd love to see some technical article
behind GFW[0] instead of yet another piece of news of some site blocked by it.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project)

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rahimnathwani
The technical method of the blocking is indeed interesting. From my home
broadband connection:

\- I can connect to port 80 on fallback.global-ssl.fastly.net (to which the
CNAME entry for www.theguardian.com points).

\- I can successfully get a 404 page (from that same server) by doing
something like this: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host:www.invaliddomain.com

\- I get disconnected if I specify Host: www.theguardian.com in any HTTP
request, even if I'm connecting to some IP address that has no relationship
with theguardian.com.

So, in this instance, the GFW is not blocking by IP address, nor is it
blocking by keyword. It is blocking by the hostname in the Host: header of the
HTTP request.

~~~
jychang
This implies that HTTPS would easily bypass it.

If only the Guardian had HTTPS support...

~~~
rahimnathwani
Sadly it's not as simple as that. Facebook has HTTPS support, but TCP
connections on port 443 just time out.

The GFW is sophisticated. It would be trivial to stop all obvious VPN traffic
(obvious = PPTP and L2TP/ipsec on default ports) without affecting other
things, but this isn't done, unless many people connect to the same server
over some period of time.

Unidentifiable TCP/UDP traffic on other ports (e.g. OpenVPN on a port number
in the 1000s) again isn't blocked. However, if the same TCP/UDP port on the
same server is accessed for long enough, and often enough, it will get
blocked. Switching to a different port on the same server will probably fix
it, until the next time.

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UnclePeepingSam
and the Chinese government confiscated electronics equipment including the
mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles from
Glenn Greenwald's partner... Got it. No wonder.

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atmosx
Not surprisingly so the Guardian is the only newspaper in the western world
that might wanna tell you the truth as is, and even take a shot or two while
doing it.

~~~
gaius
Nonsense. ALL newspapers, TV channels, websites have an agenda. ALL of them.
If you think that your pet one hasn't, then you are in an echo chamber without
realizing it, time to take a step back and reevaluate the situation.

Best thing is to read two equal-but-opposite new sources. I like The Times for
my right-wing slant and the New York Times for my left-wing, that way I get a
balanced picture. You might prefer the Guardian and the Daily Mail. But read
both and make up your own mind.

~~~
caoilte
"Best thing is to read two equal-but-opposite news sources. I like The Times
for my right-wing slant and the New York Times for my slightly less right-wing
slant, that way I understand what both sides of the American establishment
want me to think."

There, I fixed it for you.

~~~
gaius
Except that The Times is a British newspaper and IIRC has been since before
America.

Thanks for playing.

~~~
test1235
Altho' The Times is owned by News UK, which is 'a wholly owned subsidiary of
News Corp' which is 'an American multinational mass media company'.

Tenuous, but you can't deny the relationship. Most papers (especially
tabloids) in the UK are owned by News Corp.

~~~
johneth
> Most papers (especially tabloids) in the UK are owned by News Corp.

They only own The Sun and The Times. The other ones are owned by various
others.

~~~
test1235
Ah, you're right - I had incorrectly attributed tabloids like the Mirror and
Daily Mail to News Corp.

