China's Solution To The VPN Quandary: Only Authorized, And Presumably Backdoored, Crypto Links Allowed
from the will-Russia-follow-suit? dept
Two of the most important developments in China's clampdown on the digital world took place last year, when the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology declared that all VPN providers needed prior government approval to operate, and then apps stores were forced to remove the many VPNs on offer there. In some parts of China, VPNs were banned completely, but such a total shutdown is not really an option for cities with many businesses that require secure overseas communication channels. That put the Chinese authorities in something of a quandary: how could they reconcile their desire to prevent VPNs being used to circumvent online controls, while ensuring that the country's increasingly important corporate sector had access to the encryption tools it needed for operating globally? An article in the FT provides us with the answer (paywall). In recent months, international companies and organizations have found their VPNs blocked more frequently:
regulators have been pushing multinationals to buy and use state-approved VPNs. The state-approved versions can cost tens of thousands of dollars a month and expose users' communications to Beijing's scrutiny.
"China's intention is to control the flow of information entirely, making people use only government-approved VPNs by making it difficult, if not impossible, to use alternatives," said Lester Ross, partner at legal firm WilmerHale in Beijing.
The great thing about state-approved VPNs is that they can include backdoors for the government to use, and can be to shut down quickly if really serious problems arise that require even more stringent controls.
Backdoored crypto is inherently vulnerable to attacks against those built-in weaknesses, but the Chinese authorities are doubtless willing to let companies run that risk for the sake of maintaining overall control. Since Russia's views on VPNs are closely aligned with those of China, it will be interesting to see if it decides to adopt Beijing's solution to the VPN dilemma to tidy up its own rather clumsy approach.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: backdoors, china, encryption, vpn
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: (layered encryption)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Can we VPN from within a state sponsored VPN?
There are techniques which can work--at least for now.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WHO wants a job...
Get PAID by the corps not to interpret it PROPERLY..
Its the Corporate way..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Even If Their Encryption Is Backdoored ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Even If Their Encryption Is Backdoored ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Even If Their Encryption Is Backdoored ...
They almost certainly, have a number of different attack vectors in their arsenals, and this is just going to be one of many.
To answer your question the two ways are going to be:
1. Identifying those VPN's who attempt to confuse or defeat deep packet inspection techniques.
2. compromise systems en-masses, using our own backdoors and exploits, we forced or encouraged manufacturers to build in themselves.
Most of which will either already have been stolen by the numerous spies working in the United States and/or by identifying reverse engineering those exploits.
And of course, their newest method, which is simply to copy us and force manufacturers to include backdoor not only in encryption but in literally numerous electronic devices and technologies.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Why not just work out a royalties type deal whereby China can simply have access to all the NSA backdoored CPU's, drives, and GPU's...
Say, $100 per request.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Or does anyone do that anymore?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Nigerians are drooling...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
How does this differ from our own?
I'm talking about our own governments destruction of privacy, which inconveniently has to take an incremental approach:
2018 FBI Says Device Encryption Is 'Evil' And A Threat To Public Safety
1997 FBI, Security Chiefs Ask SenateFor Keys to All Encrypted Data https://partners.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/071097encrypt.html
...and this is just the FBI, which clearly doesn't have the black budget, like the NSA and CIA to sabotage so many different attack surfaces as to make encryption basically pointless for the majority of targets.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
<a href="http://www.warung303.com/Promo">PIALA DUNIA 2018</a>
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
comen
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Will someone use such VPN services approved by the government? There are still methods to use VPN in China. For example you may use VPN services that use StealthVPN protocol or Double VPN.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
i like it
"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
situs judi online terpercaya
[ link to this | view in chronology ]