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China has shut 50 microblogs for distributing pornography and carrying “vulgar content,” state media said today, as the government steps up monitoring of the internet.
“The microblogs were shut down for violations that include carrying pornographic images and videos, information for prostitution, as well as illegal advertising for sex-related drugs and productions,” Xinhua news agency said.
“Members of the public reported the microblogs, which were then investigated and closed by authorities,” it added, citing an unidentified official at one of the country’s internet regulators, the State Internet Information Office.
The government has called for stricter policing of the nation’s wildly-popular Twitter-like microblogs that more than 200 million Chinese use. Homegrown micro-blogging sites have also served as lively arenas for public discussion over government policies and scandals.
The spread of porn and vulgar material has been effectively contained since a crackdown on Internet- and cellphone-based pornography was launched in 2009, Xinhua said.
“Authorities will continue to take measures to cut down on new channels used for spreading pornography and vulgar material.”
It provided no other details.
China’s microbloggers showed their potency in a string of recent official scandals, particularly an online uproar in the wake of a high-speed bullet train crash in July that killed 40 people. Microbloggers led the charge in challenging rail officials’ evasive accounts of the disaster.
Chinese state media have demanded that Internet companies, regulators and police do more to cleanse websites of “toxic rumours.”
China heavily filters the Internet, and blocks popular foreign sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
China has said that foreign internet firms are welcome to do business "according to the law".
The statement, from Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu, is Beijing's first response to Google's threat to stop filtering content in China.
Google said late on Tuesday that Chinese cyber-attacks aimed at human rights activists might force it to close its Chinese operations.
Ms Jiang said the internet was "open" in China.
Google announced that it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn.
The search engine subsequently said it would hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering have yet been made.
'Holding statement'
At a regular foreign ministry news briefing, Ms Jiang said: "China like other countries administers the internet according to law.
"China's internet is open and the Chinese government encourages development of the internet."
She was responding to a reporter's question on Google and US concerns about the business environment in light of Google's reported cyber-attacks.
"Chinese law proscribes any form of hacking activity," she said.
When Google launched google.cn in 2006, it agreed to censor some of the search results, as required by the Chinese government.
The BBC's Chris Hogg in Shanghai said Ms Jiang's comments sounded like a holding statement, until officials can have talks with Google.
Google currently holds around a third of the Chinese search market, far behind Chinese rival Baidu with more than 60%.
China has more internet users - about 350 million - than any other country. Last year, the search engine market was worth an estimated $1bn (£614m).
President Obama emphasised cybersecurity while campaigning
The White House has appointed its cyber tsar, following a seven month search.
Howard Schmidt, a former eBay and Microsoft executive who advised President Bush, was appointed after others turned down the job.
Mr Schmidt has been set the task of uniting various disparate agencies and organisations to shore up the country's defence against cyber attack.
In May this year, President Obama pledged to personally appoint someone to the post.
In a letter posted on the White House website, John Brennan, assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism said that protecting the internet was "critical to our national security, public safety and our personal privacy and civil liberties".
"It's also vital to President Obama's efforts to strengthen our country, from the modernisation of our health care system to the high-tech job creation central to our economic recovery."
Mr Schmidt would have "regular access to the President and serve as a key member of his National Security Staff", he said.
The White House's acting cyber-security head, Melissa Hathaway, stood down in August after complaining that the post did not allow her to implement necessary changes.
-In a clear and simple way, this Cisco graphic shows the relationship of the parties in a DDOS attack. -
At 9 a.m., millions of users of Twitter.com found themselves unable to access the microblogging Web site, the modern version of the telephone party line through which more than 40 million people announce what they are doing, reading, eating and thinking at any given moment.
Undaunted, the rejected Twitterers trooped to Facebook.com, the social networking site that has more than 200 million users, which has "status updates" that mimic Twitter feeds. But before users could begin to type, "Is sad that Twitter is down," a terrible and panic-inducing discovery: Facebook was down, too.
Kathleen Loughlin, a spokeswoman for Facebook, also cited a denial-of-service attack, which she said "resulted in degraded service for some users." She added that no user data were at risk during the attack and promised that Facebook was "continuing to monitor the situation to ensure that users have the fast and reliable experience they've come to expect from Facebook."
"On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial-of-service attack," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote on the official Twitter blog. "Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as . . . Twitter for intended customers or users. We are defending against this attack now."
The first big DDoS attack, in February 2000 took down some of the Web's most popular sites for hours, including Yahoo, CNN, eBay, Amazon.com, Buy.com, and E*Trade. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation promptly held a news conference to discuss the disruption to the Internet and eventually tracked down the perpetrator, 15-year-old "Mafiaboy," after he bragged about it to friends online.
Mafiaboy was most likely trying to get attention, like script kiddie hackers do when they deface Web sites. Other attackers have different agendas. For instance, there are politically motivated DDoS attacks, such as those involving Russian and Georgian sites last year. Estonia sites were attacked in 2007. Meanwhile, the origin of recent DDoS attacks targeting U.S. government sites and sites in South Korea remain a mystery.
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Twitter users were unable to log in for several hours after the social networking site became the victim of a cyber attack.
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What's a denial-of-service attack? A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is any effort designed to interfere with access to a Web site or Internet service. A common method of attack involves flooding a target server with so many communications requests that legitimate traffic can not get through. This can shut down or slow down the site temporarily.
Web sites aren't the only things that can be targeted in DoS attacks. Unplugging someone's computer is a very basic type of DoS attack.
What's a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack? Because Web sites are built to handle a lot of traffic, it can take millions of simultaneous communications requests to have enough affect on the performance of the server for an attack. In a DDoS attack, tens of thousands or even millions of computers are used to send traffic to the target site all at the same time and repeatedly."It's a bit like 15 fat men trying to get through a revolving door at the same time--nothing can move."
What's a botnet? The hijacked PCs that are used in a DDoS attack comprise a botnet. The individual computers are called "bots," "zombies" or "slaves" and are controlled remotely by the "master" attacker. The attacker relays instructions to the bots via a command-and-control server, typically using IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Botnets are also used to distribute spam. Some newer botnets, like one created by a version of Conficker, relay instructions via peer-to-peer.
How many bots are needed to take down a Web site? The number depends on how much resources, servers and bandwidth, the target site has. It can take 25,000 to 50,000 bots to cripple a typical site and as few as 10,000 or less for a small Web site, according to Kevin Stevens, a security researcher for SecureWorks' Counter Threat Unit.
It's difficult to know exactly how big any particular botnet is and guesses vary widely. For example, estimates of the Conficker botnet ranged from 500,000 PCs to 10 million.
What kind of damage can a DoS attack do? A DoS can make a Web site completely inaccessible to anyone for a period of time, like the most recent attack did with Twitter. Or it can be equivalent to a hiccup, slowing down page loads or affecting only part of the site.
Sites that aren't in the direct line of fire can also be affected. For example, if a company that is attacked is hosting images or content that is fed to other sites, those other sites may have trouble. So many sites feature Twitter updates that it's likely some of those associated sites were impacted when Twitter was down and the ancillary site's requests to get updates were ignored.
How can a DDoS be prevented or stopped?
In 2001, the White House was able to thwart a DDoS attack that was programmed into the code of the Code Red virus by moving the site away from the targeted IP address.
And in 2005, Microsoft sidestepped a DDoS that was going to be triggered by PCs infected with the Blaster virus by killing the targeted IP address.
A company can reduce its risk by buying plenty of servers and bandwidth, and hosting content on backup servers. Companies can also limit the number of connections that the Web server allows at any one time and set the firewall to block certain types of data that are used in DDoS attacks, said SecureWorks' Stevens.
What can individuals do to prevent their computers from being used in a DDoS attack?
To keep malware off a computer, people should install the latest operating system and application patches, update their antivirus and other security software, consider using auto-updates for browsers and be careful about opening up attachments and visiting Web sites.
