U.S. asks China to investigate the “Great Cannon” cyber weapon

The United States acknowledged last week that it has asked China to investigate a cyber weapon known as the “Great Cannon” used to disrupt Internet traffic and attack websites designed to circumvent Chinese censorship.

Deputy spokesperson Jeff Rathke said in a press briefing, “The United States is committed to protecting the internet as an open platform on which all people can innovate, learn, organize, communicate, free from censorship or interference. And we believe a global, interoperable, secure, and reliable internet is essential to realizing this objective. And we view attacks by malicious cyber actors who target critical infrastructure or U.S. companies and U.S. consumers as threats to national security and to the economy of the United States.”

According to Rathke, the cyber attack “manipulated international web traffic intended for one of China’s biggest web services companies and turned it into malicious traffic directed at U.S. sites.”

A recent report from Citizen Labs found that a sophisticated large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack had been launched against GreatFire.org and GitHub, both sites meant to bridge Internet barriers to content.

“The operational deployment of the Great Cannon represents a significant escalation in state-level information control: the normalization of widespread use of an attack tool to enforce censorship by weaponizing users,” stated Citizen Labs in its report. “Specifically, the Cannon manipulates the traffic of ‘bystander’ systems outside China, silently programming their browsers to create a massive DDoS attack.”

Citizen Labs explained that while the creators of Great Cannon intended for this particular attack to be visible, the cyber tool itself could be used in a more covert way to attack other sites. It was found to be distinct from the “Great Firewall of China,” the web barrier created by the government to lock down the content available to the Chinese public. Relatedly, China and Russia last week signed a treaty agreeing not to commit cyber attacks against the other’s country.

The State Department’s Rathke told reporters the government expects a report from China on the issue.

“We have asked Chinese authorities to investigate this activity and provide us with the results of their investigation. At the same time, we’re working with all willing partners to enhance cyber security, promote norms of acceptable state behavior in cyber space, and to protect the principle of freedom of expression online,” said Rathke.