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On December 26, 2014, in an announcement posted on their website, a new chairperson for CNNIC was directly appointed by the Cyberspace Administration of China. The announcement of this appointment coincided with the complete blocking of Gmail.

Cyberspace Administration of China (中央网信办) is chaired by Lu Wei, “China’s web doorkeeper”. Lu Wei is also the vice chair of the Central Propaganda Department, according to his official resume.

This office is directly responsible for the blocking of Gmail and other websites including Facebook, Twitter and Google.

CNNIC is China’s certification authority and operates the country’s domain name registry. 

What are certificates used for?

Certificates are used primarily to verify the identity of a person or device, authenticate a service, or encrypt files. 

What is a certification authority (CA)?  

All Google products in China have been severely disrupted since June of this year and Chinese users have not been able to access Gmail via its web interface since the summer. However, email protocols such as IMAP, SMTP and POP3 had been accessible but are not anymore. These protocols are used in the default email app on iPhone, Microsoft Outlook on PC and many more email clients.

On December 26, GFW started to block large numbers of IP addresses used by Gmail. These IP addresses are used by IMAP/SMTP/POP3. Chinese users now have no way of accessing Gmail behind the GFW. Before, they could still send or receive emails via email clients even though Gmail's web interface was not accessible. 

Google's own traffic chart shows a sharp decline of Chinese traffic to Gmail. 

Below is a ping request to the Gmail SMTP server, which is completely inaccessible in China.

 

We are delighted to announce that GreatFire.org is now delivering uncensored, Chinese-language information from the BBC to Chinese netizens behind the great firewall.

The BBC’s Chinese language news website was blocked in China shortly after its launch. Users in China have been able to access content using VPNs. The BBC has also recommended the Psiphon app as a circumvention tool.

The Greatfire.org initiative, with the BBC’s support, makes the content available to users who just want the content to work, without needing special tools.

This initiative coincides with the run up to the local elections in Taiwan. This gives Chinese netizens a rare opportunity to glimpse how their cross straits cousins elect local officials in a transparent and open democratic process.

BBC Chinese is providing unique coverage of the elections with detailed candidate profiles and in-depth analysis. If you want to know what makes people stand for office in Taiwan and how they become a candidate this is the site to read. If you want to understand more about the democratic processes and the impact, both locally and nationally that the newly elected councillors can have, look no further.

The censorship authorities in China have blocked access to HSBC’s corporate banking portal, HSBCnet, casting a large shadow over the the ability for both foreign and domestic companies to conduct day-to-day business inside the country.

What happened?

On October 23, 2014 users started to report that they had trouble accessing the online corporate banking service at global behemoth HSBC.

HSBC's corporate portal HSBCnet apparently blocked in China cc @GreatFireChina http://t.co/80WvVpeKpG pic.twitter.com/uEnTBwCU7n

— Larry Salibra (@larrysalibra) October 22, 2014

The bank itself was forced to add a note on its website acknowledging a problem:

Important Message: Customers logging in from China

Dear HSBCnet User

Please be advised that HSBCnet Users are currently experiencing problems when attempting to log into the system from within China. We are aware of this issue and are diligently working with local providers to deliver a prompt resolution.

This challenge resides outside the HSBCnet system and activity performed through our online banking platform remains secure.

The Chinese censorship authorities have DNS poisoned *edgecastcdn.net, which means all subdomains of edgecastcdn.net are blocked in China. EdgeCast is one of the largest Content Delivery Networks (CDN) in the world and provides its cloud services to thousands of websites and apps in China.

We have acknowledged all along that our method of unblocking websites using “collateral freedom” hinges on the gamble that the Chinese authorities will not block access to global CDNs because they understand the value of China being integrated with the global internet. However, we can now reveal publicly that the authorities are doing just that - attempting to cut China off from the global internet.

We have seen instances of “collateral damage” due to “collateral freedom” over the past few days and have received emails from some smaller website owners wondering why their non-sensitive sites are being blocked by the great firewall.

What's going on?

The disruption to EdgeCast’s service was noted by the company on their website on November 14, 2014, although we noticed a problem on November 12 and the first poisoning on the 13th. The company's status update still appears on their site:

Please be advised, we are experiencing issues with content delivery in the China region due to suddenly increased restrictions imposed by the Chinese Government. If you are receiving reports from end users not able to view content from within China, please contact our network Operations center to discuss the options available to you.

Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple continue to trust CNNIC, putting user data at risk everywhere.

This is clearly a malicious attack on Apple in an effort to gain access to usernames and passwords and consequently all data stored on iCloud such as iMessages, photos, contacts, etc. Unlike the recent attack on Google, this attack is nationwide. While the attacks on Google and Yahoo enabled the authorities to snoop on what information Chinese were accessing on those two platforms, the Apple attack is different. If users ignored the security warning and clicked through to the Apple site and entered their username and password, this information has now been compromised by the Chinese authorities. Many Apple customers use iCloud to store their personal information, including iMessages, photos and contacts. This may also somehow be related again to images and videos of the Hong Kong protests being shared on the mainland.

We also know that journalists are under enormous amounts of stress and we respect the fact that both WSJ and Reuters have reporters on the ground, putting themselves in danger to report this story. But why make such an effort if the fruits of that labor become evident more than 24 hours after the event for the audience that deserves to hear this story the most?

Reuters Chinese and WSJ Chinese are not reporting anything related to the Hong Kong protests while Reuters U.S. and WSJ U.S. both feature the protest as headline items.