Rather Than Launch A Massive DDoS Attack, This Time China Just Asks GitHub To Take Down Page It Doesn't Like

You may recall that a year ago, a massive DDoS attack was launched against GitHub from China. The attack itself was somewhat clever, in that it effectively turned the Great Firewall around, using Chinese search engine Baidu's ad platform and analytics platform to basically load code that contributed to the attack. The target of the attack were two tools that helped people in China access material that was blocked in China by the Great Firewall. Of course, this attack was actually the second attempt by China to stop people from accessing such information on GitHub. The first attack involved just using the Great Firewall to block GitHub entirely (it needed to block the entire GitHub, rather than just specific pages, because GitHub is all HTTPS) -- but that caused Chinese programmers who rely on GitHub to freak out and point out that they rely on GitHub to do their jobs.

Well, this third time, China is trying a different approach: it's sent a takedown request to GitHub, asking if a certain page can be removed for "malicious slander." Since GitHub posts all its government takedown notices, you can see the full request, which is rather short and sweet:

Cyber Security Association of China

To whom this might be concerned at GitHub:

The post at https://github.com/programthink/zhao/issues/38 vilifies our President Xi as a murder suspect, which is a groundless and malicious slander. We hereby express our strong concern and request you to take it off your website at the earliest time possible.

Cyber Security Association of China

June 8, 2016

Address: No.190 Chaoyangmennei Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing. Zip Code: 100010

The blog post link above where we found this story also notes that the entire repo that includes this content is currently not accessible in China, though it's accessible outside of China. At the very least, that suggests that GitHub disabled access to it within the country. It's, of course, unknown if China believes that disabling access just from within China is enough based on its takedown, but it is the equivalent of just blocking it via the Great Firewall -- so perhaps.

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