Google Blogoscoped

Forum

China interfering with gmail

George R [PersonRank 10]

Tuesday, March 22, 2011
13 years ago7,005 views

The Guardian is reporting that Google claims the Chinese government is interfering with gmail and some other Google services accessed from China.

They say the people finder is blocked entirely.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/20/google-gmail

mbegin [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

From the official Google Online Security Blog:

<< We’ve noticed some highly targeted and apparently politically motivated attacks against our users. We believe activists may have been a specific target. We’ve also seen attacks against users of another popular social site. All these attacks abuse a publicly-disclosed MHTML vulnerability for which an exploit was publicly posted in January 2011. Users browsing with the Internet Explorer browser are affected.

For now, we recommend concerned users and corporations seriously consider deploying Microsoft’s temporary Fixit to block this attack until an official patch is available.

To help protect users of our services, we have deployed various server-side defenses to make the MHTML vulnerability harder to exploit. That said, these are not tenable long-term solutions, and we can’t guarantee them to be 100% reliable or comprehensive. We’re working with Microsoft to develop a comprehensive solution for this issue.

The abuse of this vulnerability is also interesting because it represents a new quality in the exploitation of web-level vulnerabilities. To date, similar attacks focused on directly compromising users' systems, as opposed to leveraging vulnerabilities to interact with web
services. >>

http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/03/mhtml-vulnerability-under-active.html

George R [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

The New York Times has an article by Sharon LaFraniere and David Barboza about electronic censorship in China.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22china.html?_r=3

• interfering with gmail
• blocking Google searches for "freedom"
• disconnecting phone calls when the word "protest" is said
• crippling VPNs

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

And now:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12816042

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

My Gmail is also acting superflaky since about a month, albeit I'm using Google Chrome. Might be completely unrelated, the internet in China is generally super flaky.

George R [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

If your internet is flaky, try using the basic html interface (mail/h).
https://mail.google.com/mail/h/

George R [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

It is being reported that the always use https option in hotmail is not working in some countries. The eff indicates that Microsoft disabled the feature.

The Register says:
"Microsoft is blaming a mystery bug for preventing access to the encrypted version of Hotmail, denying that it deliberately blocked access to the service in Syria."

Combined list of locations from two reports:
• Algeria
• Bahamas
• Bahrain
• Cayman Islands
• Congo
• Egypt ?
• Fiji
• Iran
• Jordan
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Lebanon
• Morocco
• Myanmar
• Nigeria
• Sudan
• Syria
• Tajikistan
• Turkmenistan
• Uzbekistan

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/microsoft-shuts-https-hotmail-over-dozen-countries
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/26/microsoft_https_hotmail_syria/
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/03/26/0053203/MS-Removes-HTTPS-From-Hotmail-For-Troubled-Nations

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

13 years ago #

> If your internet is flaky, try using the basic html
> interface (mail/h).
> mail.google.com/mail/h/

Thanks George, that one loaded superfast for me right now... a potentially super useful tip, I'll watch how this one fares over the next days!

Forum home

Advertisement

 
Blog  |  Forum     more >> Archive | Feed | Google's blogs | About
Advertisement

 

This site unofficially covers Google™ and more with some rights reserved. Join our forum!