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China Backs Off Green Dam, Lessening Botnet Threat
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2009-08-13
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The Chinese government has made a concession that should help the security community breathe a little easier. Essentially, it's backed off a plan to install the Green Dam software filter on every new computer in the country.
 | | China Backs Off Green Dam, Lessening Botnet Threat |  |
The last time we talked about the Green Dam Youth Escort software (which is an anti-porn measure if you believe China's politicians) was about a month and a half ago. At that time, its deployment had been delayed, but its spread was still supposed to be a sure thing.
Now, the software will be installed on computers in public spaces (think schools and Internet cafes), but the decision about whether or not to install it on home computers in China should be left up to individual PC owners.
"We entirely respect customers' benefit and freedom. We will definitely not make installation compulsory for all computers on sale," said China's industry and information technology minister, Li Yizhong, according to Peter Foster.
So why should the security community care? Well, as we've said before, experts have determined that Green Dam is very vulnerable to attack, and if Green Dam were to be installed on a lot of computers, it might not be too hard to turn the whole collection into a huge botnet.
Individual hackers or unfriendly governments could wreak all sorts of havoc from there.
The potential Green Dam threat appears to have grown a lot smaller thanks to this new development, then.
Let's just hope that the Chinese government uses the same definition of "not compulsory" that democratic nations do, and that China's citizens don't see fit to install the software, anyway.
About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews, InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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