Update: GitHub is fully functional now.
Old Story: GitHub, one of the most popular websites among programmers and developers is was under continuous attack from Chinese hackers. The collaborative project development website is was facing a massive DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack. Whenever GitHub users outside China are trying to access web pages with advertisements served by Chinese search engine Baidu, a malicious JavaScript code drives an insane amount of traffic to “specific” GitHub projects.
Why is GitHub facing attacks?
GitHub has wrote in its blog post that is being targeted for a specific type of content. It reads:
“Based on reports we’ve received, we believe the intent of this attack is to convince us to remove a specific class of content.”
So, what is this specific class of content? GitHub is facing attacks on two specific GitHub projects. They are: GitHub is facing attacks on two specific GitHub projects. They are: GreatFire and CN-NYTimes. These are the firewall tools which people use to dodge the Chinese firewall. The communist government of China is known for its internet censorship. GreatFire: It’s a popular anti-censorship group on GitHub to fight against the internet censorship in China. GreatFire is run by Greatfire.org. This is linked to 10 websites that are blocked in China. CN-NYTimes: It is a group that hosts the New York Times mirror, which is usually blocked in China.
After 113 hours of sustained DDoS attacks our defenses are holding. We will keep our status at yellow until the threat has subsided. — GitHub Status (@githubstatus) March 30, 2015
Recommended article: Top Programming Languages on GitHub, JavaScript Tops the List
Is Chinese government directly involved?
Cyber security firm F-Secure told WSJ that this attack is likely to have connections with Chinese authorities because the hackers involved manipulated Web traffic at a high level of the internet infrastructure. Mikko Hypponen from the firm said:
“It had to be someone who had the ability to tamper with all the Internet traffic coming into China.”
It should be noted that recently China has accepted that it is having an army of hackers. GitHub uses encryption and outside observers are unable to observe the user’s activity. China has blocked GitHub for a brief time back in 2013 but reinstated the access due to the opposition from software developers in China.
Meanwhile, Baidu has denied its involvement in the attack. It has ruled any possibility of any security problem or hacking instance into its systems.
Update: GitHub is fully functional now.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” lang=”en”><p>Everything operating normally.</p>— GitHub Status (@githubstatus) <a href=”https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/582862783827591168″>March 31, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Also read: Stolen and Hacked Uber Accounts Are Being Sold for $1 on the Dark Web
Is Chinese government directly involved in these attacks? Tell us your views in comments!
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