China Resurrects Great Cannon For DDoS Attacks On Hong Kong Forum

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: After more than two years since it's been used the last time, the Chinese government deployed an infamous DDoS tool named the "Great Cannon" to launch attacks against LIHKG, an online forum where Hong Kong residents are organizing anti-Beijing protests. [...] DDoS attacks with the Great Cannon have been rare, mainly because they tend to generate a lot of bad press for the Chinese government. But in a report published today, AT&T Cybersecurity says the tool has been deployed once again. This time, the Great Cannon's victim was LIHKG.com, an online platform where the organizers of the Hong Kong 2019 protests have been sharing information about the locations of daily demonstrations. The site is also a place where Hong Kong residents congregate to recant stories of Chinese police abuse and upload video evidence.

AT&T Cybersecurity says the first Great Cannon DDoS attacks targeted LIHKG on August 31, while the last one being recorded on November 27. AT&T Cybersecurity researcher Chris Doman said the August attacks used JavaScript code that was very similar to the one spotted in the 2017 attacks on Mingjingnews.com. According to LIHKG, the site received more than 1.5 billion requests per hour during the August attack, compared to the site's previous traffic record that was only a meager 6.5 million requests per hour.

Brave people

[110010001000]

They are tremendously brave people. I wish them the best.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

WOW. Cyber wars.

[Forty Two Tenfold]

I live in the future!

Moral equivalence

[Way Smarter Than You]

Now we just need our pro ChiCom trolls to tell us how the US does bad stuff, too, so this is ok.

Re:

[fustakrakich]

Depends who is doing it, right?

So Block China

[betsuin]

So the Chinese ruling elite commandeer citizen computers with a JavaScript injecting to DDoS?

Thus block all Chinese originated packets.

Recant stories

[Geoffrey.landis]

Ten comments so far, and nobody has yet made fun of the summary for saying "The site is also a place where Hong Kong residents congregate to recant stories of Chinese police abuse."

Recanting a story is not the same as recounting a story.

Just one tool of several not used

[Raymond Berry]

China can leverage a DDOS attack anywhere and on any site it pleases, it just hasn't had to deploy it much because it has no significant threat to it's control. I'm also quite sure this isn't the only tool they have at their disposal, as the government there has a huge investment in maintaining internal control over what information goes where. That investment is paid for by all of us when we choose to buy stuff from a country that has leveraged it's huge population to serve corporate interests there. It

Re: Just one tool of several not used

[zlives]

Nice however most consumers do not have a choice.
Heck i for one would like to banhammer Equifax, unfortunately no choice if intention of purchasing large items.