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Censorship of GitHub

January 01, 1970

GitHub has been the target of censorship from governments using methods ranging from local Internet service provider blocks, intermediary blocking using methods such as DNS hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks, and denial-of-service attacks on GitHub's servers from countries including China, India, Iraq, Russia, and Turkey. In all of these cases, GitHub has been eventually unblocked after backlash from users and technology businesses or compliance from GitHub.

Background edit

GitHub is a web-based Git repository hosting service and is primarily used to host the source code of software, facilitate project management, and provide distributed revision control functionality of Git, access control, wikis, and bug tracking.[1] As of June 2023, GitHub reports having over 100 million users and over 330 million repositories.[2] It offers free accounts, a pastebin service called Gist, and free website hosting under its github.io domain. The GitHub terms of service prohibits illegal use and it reserves the right to remove content at its discretion.[3] Users can fork (copy and individually develop) other projects, which GitHub does not automatically take down when served DMCA takedown notices.[4] GitHub uses HTTPS for its connections, making data more secure against interception from third parties.

China edit

Main article: Internet censorship in China

China heavily regulates Internet traffic and has blocked many international Internet companies including Facebook and Twitter.[5] In addition, Western businesses have said that these restrictions hurt their business by reducing access to information, such as from search engines and those using VPNs.[6] In 2013, the country started blocking GitHub and it was met by protests among Chinese programmers.[7]

GreatFire, a Chinese anti-censorship organization, has attempted to circumvent the Great Firewall of China using mirror websites. However, the links to these pages were posted using GitHub which brings the risk of the site being blocked along with the mirrors. In a previous incident, HSBC bank's Chinese operation was taken offline when the Akamai network was targeted for hosting GreatFire.org websites.[8]

DNS hijacking edit

Blockage edit

 
Test results from viewDNS.info showing that GitHub was blocked from within China

On January 21, 2013, GitHub was blocked in China using DNS hijacking. It was reported that the attack was carried out in response to political information posted on the platform.[9] Confirming the block, a spokesperson for GitHub said: "It does appear that we're at least being partly blocked by the Great Firewall of China".[a][10] The block was lifted on January 23, 2013, after an online protest on Sina Weibo.[11]

Criticism edit

Kai-Fu Lee brought attention to the block after posting about it on Sina Weibo. He derided the block, saying: "Blocking GitHub is unjustifiable, and will only derail the nation's programmers from the world, while bringing about a loss in competitiveness and insight." Lee's post was shared over 80,000 times.[11]

The Next Web called the block unfortunate, saying that "Chinese developers will have to play around with workarounds or find an alternative service when they want to work with their peers around the world."[10]

MITM attack edit

Attack edit

 
An example of the warning users in China received from browsers when trying to access GitHub with the self-signed certificate

On January 26, 2013, GitHub users in China experienced a man-in-the-middle attack in which attackers could have intercepted traffic between the site and its users in China. The mechanism of the attack was through a fake SSL certificate.[12] Users attempting to access GitHub received a warning of an invalid SSL certificate, which, due to being signed by an unknown authority, was quickly detected.[13] A spokesperson for GitHub said: "Early last week, it appeared that GitHub was being at least partially blocked by the Great Firewall of China... After a couple days, it appeared that GitHub was no longer being blocked."[12] NETRESEC performed forensics of the attack and determined that it was indeed an attack, due to the large number of router hops involved (6) and because the user submitting the packet capture was from China.[14]

This attack was performed again on March 26, 2020, on GitHub Pages and March 27, 2020, on GitHub.com.[15][16]

Rationale edit

GreatFire speculated that the attack was related to a popular White House petition calling for the denial of entry to the United States of the architects of the Great Firewall of China.[13] The petition linked to a Gist containing names of 3 of the architects and their contact information.[17] GreatFire also said that since GitHub is HTTPS only, Chinese authorities can't block individual pages and have to completely block the website, which helps explain why they would have to resort to the attack.[13] InformationWeek noted the economic difficulty related to blocking GitHub: "What makes GitHub interesting from a censorship point of view is that it combines a critical business service—collaborative coding—with social interaction."[12]

DDoS attack edit

On March 26, 2015, GitHub was the target of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack originating from China. It targeted two anti-censorship projects: GreatFire and cn-nytimes, the latter including instructions on how to access the Chinese version of The New York Times.[18] GitHub blocked China-based IP addresses from visiting these repositories. If a visitor comes from China, the page would show "Repository unavailable because of the Chinese Internet Blacklist". Based on GitHub, they are doing this so "that our users in that jurisdiction may continue to have access to GitHub to collaborate and build software." [19] They are now having a gov-takedowns repository to record all the government requirements they could show.[20]

India edit

Main article: Internet censorship in India

India selectively censors websites at the federal and state levels. This is enforced by the Information Technology Act, 2000, as well as licensing requirements for Internet service providers (ISPs). Critics such as Rajeev Chandrasekhar have noted the vagueness of these regulations and the Centre for Internet and Society found that ISPs tended to over-comply with takedown requests.[21]

ISP blockage edit

On December 17, 2014, the Indian Department of Telecom issued an order to ISPs to block 32 websites.[22] The notice was made public on December 31, 2014, and it included GitHub, GitHub's Gist, Vimeo, the Internet Archive, and various pastebin services.[23]

Direction to block Internet Website

To: All Internet Service Licensees
Under the powers conferred by Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and under the Information Technology (Procedures and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009, it has been decided to immediately block the access to the following 32 URLs:...

Department of Telecommunications[23]

The block order was confirmed on Twitter by Arvind Gupta, the national head of the ruling party BJP, and was attributed to a suggestion by India's Anti Terrorism Squad in response to content by the Islamic extremist group ISIS. Gupta also stated that websites that cooperated with the investigation were being unblocked.[24]

On January 2, 2015, the Ministry of Communications issued a statement that it will be unblocking 4 of the websites, including GitHub's Gist, and said that it will consider unblocking the remaining websites once they complied. Explaining its rationale, the ministry stated: "Many of these websites do not require any authentication for pasting any material on them... These websites were being used frequently for pasting, communicating [jihadi] content..."[25] Gulshan Rai of the CERT-In agency of the ministry said that the order came from the Mumbai Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate following an interrogation of Arif Majeed, an ISIS recruit.[26]

On January 4, 2015, a GitHub spokesperson said that some users were still having trouble accessing the site and that GitHub has attempted to reach out to the Indian government, but is still unclear about the cause of the block. They said that restoring access to the developer community in India was their top priority and that they "would like to work with the Indian government to establish a transparent process for identifying unlawful content, restore access, and ensure that GitHub continues to remain available in the future without interruption."[27]

Impact edit

The Times of India reported blockage for Indian users by the ISPs Vodafone, BSNL and Hathway, but it still had access using Airtel.[22] Because the order only told ISPs what to block and not how, the effectiveness of blocking access varied. The blocking was unreliable and seemed to be occurring at multiple layers, even within the same ISP. Blocking methods included IP blocking, the use of a proxy server, and DNS blocking. Methods for gaining access ranged from using an alternate DNS server to installing circumvention software.[28]

Criticism edit

 
A poster by the Free Software Foundation Tamil Nadu protesting the blocks using the hashtag #GOIBlocks

Regarding the blocks, TechCrunch remarked that "[the] addition of GitHub... is one of the more head-scratching decisions" and anticipated an uproar considering its importance in the tech industry. They also called it embarrassing in the context of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make in India campaign to promote India as a destination for information technology.[29] Prasanth Sugathan of the Software Freedom and Law Center called the blocks short-sighted, saying that "If you block one website, terrorists can always use another one... Such a move only inconveniences the daily users..." Twitter users protested using the hashtag #GOIblocks and recirculated a hypocritical message by Modi from 2012 condemning blanket blocking of websites.[26] Anonymous of India also posted several threats against the government, but did not take any action.[25]

Russia edit

Main article: Internet censorship in Russia

The Russian government blacklists websites that include child pornography, drug-related material, advocacy of suicide, extremist material, and other illegal content under the Russian Internet Restriction Bill to protect children. This list is maintained by Roscomnadzor, Russia's regulatory agency.[30]

ISP blockage edit

 
The block message Russian GitHub users saw when trying to access the website on December 2, 2014[b]

On December 2, 2014, Roscomnadzor blocked GitHub due to it hosting various copies of a suicide manual. Because GitHub uses HTTPS, which encrypts data between a user's computer and GitHub's servers, Internet service providers (ISPs) were forced to block the whole website instead of the pages involved. Complying ISPs included: Beeline, MTS, MGTS and Megafon. Maxim Ksenzov, the Deputy Head of Roscomnadzor, said in a statement that the block was due to GitHub not complying with earlier takedown requests for the manual on October 10, 2014.[31] GitHub was also momentarily blocked on October 2, 2014, until the original copy of the manual was deleted by its uploader.[32]

Banned content edit

The manual in question was posted on March 23, 2014, and details 31 methods of suicide in Russian.[c] It was added to a repository for a software library used for working with Windows filesystems and was forked by several users.[33] The original copy was deleted by the owner on October 2, 2014, after numerous GitHub users complained because of a block by Roscomnadzor.[d][33][34]

TechCrunch remarked that the manual seemed to be written as satire and includes methods such as "biting your tongue", "joining the military" or "getting a good gun" from a policeman.[35] The takedown targeted the manual and its copies, as well as a reposted blog entry about suicide.[36]

Response edit

GitHub complied and blocked access to the content within Russia saying that they were working to get reinstated. Citing its terms of service, GitHub elaborated that "you must not, in the use of the Service, violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright or trademark laws)."[35] GitHub also created an official repository titled "roskomnadzor" for the purpose of posting takedown notices from the regulator. (It was later moved to "gov-takedowns" after a request from China on June 9, 2016[37]) In the readme of the repository, GitHub states that they are concerned about Internet censorship and believe in transparency to document the potential for chilling effects. They also warn that the presence of a notice is only for documentation and that GitHub does not pass any judgement on their validity.[38]

Turkey edit

See also: Internet censorship in Turkey
 
Network measurements by Turkey Blocks confirming the time at which GitHub was blocked

On October 8, 2016, following the leak of emails of Turkish Minister Berat Albayrak by RedHack, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) ordered ISPs to block several file sharing websites, including Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Google Drive.[39] The censorship monitoring watchdog Turkey Blocks observed that GitHub was blocked the following morning, and associated administrative orders were subsequently posted by the BTK stating that access had been officially restricted.[40] Software that depended on GitHub reported errors, such as Font Awesome and Homebrew. Participants in Startup Istanbul week also complained about the unavailability of infrastructure. The #GitHub hashtag became one of Twitter's top trends in Turkey. According to The Daily Dot, RedHack purposefully spread the emails using multiple services, expecting Turkey to block them so that the Streisand effect could be utilized. GitHub was unblocked 18 hours later.[41]

Notes edit

  1. ^ The Next Web and GreatFire both claim that it was fully blocked however.[10]
  2. ^ The text of the page consists of 4 reasons why the website breaks laws under the Russian Federation, and why therefore, the contents of the website are blocked.
  3. ^ The manual itself seems to be a translation of a text originating on Usenet.
  4. ^ However, because the original was forked, and Git keeps a history of changes, the file was still accessible on GitHub.

References edit

  1. ^ Stephanidis, Constantine (2020). HCI International 2020 - Late Breaking Papers: Cognition, Learning and Games: 22nd HCI International Conference, HCII 2020, Copenhagen, Denmark, July 19-24, 2020, Proceedings. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature. p. 355. ISBN 978-3-030-60127-0.
  2. ^ "About". GitHub. from the original on June 28, 2023. Retrieved June 28, 2023.
  3. ^ "GitHub Terms of Service". GitHub. from the original on June 24, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015. (Specifically terms A8 and G7)
  4. ^ "DMCA Takedown Policy". GitHub. from the original on July 1, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  5. ^ Wei, Sisi (December 17, 2014). "Inside the Firewall: Tracking the News That China Blocks". ProPublica. from the original on June 5, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  6. ^ Chin, Josh (February 12, 2015). "China Internet Restrictions Hurting Business, Western Companies Say". Wall Street Journal Blogs. from the original on July 4, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  7. ^ Roberts, Margaret E. (2018). Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-691-17886-8.
  8. ^ Silbert, Sean (November 26, 2014). "Routing around the Great Firewall of China". LA Times. from the original on June 30, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  9. ^ Fingar, Thomas; Oi, Jean C. (2020). Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China's Future. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-5036-1223-5.
  10. ^ a b c Protalinski, Emil (January 21, 2013). "The Chinese government appears to be blocking GitHub via DNS (Update: Investigation underway)". The Next Web. from the original on April 14, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2015.
  11. ^ a b Kan, Michael (January 23, 2013). "GitHub unblocked in China after former Google head slams its censorship". Computer World. from the original on March 30, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2015.
  12. ^ a b c Claburn, Thomas (January 30, 2013). "China's GitHub Censorship Dilemma". InformationWeek. from the original on July 3, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  13. ^ a b c martin (January 30, 2013). "China, GitHub and the man-in-the-middle". GreatFire. from the original on August 19, 2016. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  14. ^ Hjelmvik, Erik (February 2, 2013). "Forensics of Chinese MITM on GitHub". NETRESEC Blog. from the original on June 30, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  15. ^ "Hacker is deploying large-scale MITM attack via domestic backbone". March 27, 2020. from the original on March 26, 2020. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  16. ^ "GitHub 遭遇中间人攻击，访问报证书错误 - OSCHINA". www.oschina.net. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  17. ^ Muncaster, Phil (January 31, 2013). "Great Firewall architects fingered for GitHub attack". The Register. from the original on June 30, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  18. ^ Anthony, Sebastian (March 30, 2015). "GitHub battles "largest DDoS" in site's history, targeted at anti-censorship tools". ars technica. from the original on January 2, 2019. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  19. ^ Horwitz, Josh (June 28, 2016). "China's fierce censors try a new tactic with GitHub—asking nicely". Quartz. Retrieved December 25, 2020.
  20. ^ hubot. "gov-takedowns". GitHub. Retrieved December 25, 2020.
  21. ^ Patry, Melody (November 21, 2013). "India: Digital freedom under threat? Online censorship". index. from the original on November 4, 2016. Retrieved April 2, 2015.
  22. ^ a b Saxena, Anupam (December 31, 2014). "Pastebin, Dailymotion, Github blocked after DoT order: Report". The Times of India. from the original on March 2, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  23. ^ a b Blue, Violet (December 31, 2014). "India blocks 32 websites, including GitHub, Internet Archive, Pastebin, Vimeo". ZDNet. from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  24. ^ Ghoshal, Abhimanyu (December 31, 2014). "GitHub, Vimeo and 30 more sites blocked in India over content from ISIS". The Next Web. from the original on April 4, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  25. ^ a b Sharma, Ravi (January 2, 2015). "Indian government unblocks Vimeo, Dailymotion, 2 other websites". The Times of India. from the original on February 8, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  26. ^ a b Arora, Kim (January 1, 2015). "Government blocks 32 websites to check ISIS propaganda". The Times of India - Tech. from the original on January 4, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  27. ^ Orsini, Lauren (January 2, 2015). "India Unblocks GitHub, Three Other Websites". readwrite. from the original on March 20, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  28. ^ Srikanth, Kaustubh (June 1, 2015). "Technical Observations About Recent Internet Censorship In India". The Huffington Post. from the original on May 21, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  29. ^ Russell, Jon (December 31, 2014). "India's Government Asks ISPs To Block GitHub, Vimeo And 30 Other Websites (Updated)". TechCrunch. from the original on March 26, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  30. ^ Khazan, Olga (November 9, 2012). "Russia's secret new Internet blacklist". The Washington Post. from the original on May 11, 2015. Retrieved April 2, 2015.
  31. ^ Lunden, Ingrid (December 3, 2014). "Russia Blacklists, Blocks GitHub Over Pages That Refer To Suicide". TechCrunch. from the original on March 27, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  32. ^ Лихачёв, Никита (October 2, 2014). AliExpress, 2ch и GitHub попали в реестр запрещённых сайтов [AliExpress, 2ch and GitHub put on the register of banned sites]. TJournal (in Russian). from the original on April 25, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2015.
  33. ^ a b "Create suicide.txt". GitHub - amdf/objidlib. March 23, 2014. from the original on June 27, 2015. Retrieved April 8, 2015.
  34. ^ "Delete suicide.txt". GitHub - amdf/objidlib. October 2, 2014. from the original on June 27, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2015.
  35. ^ a b Lunden, Ingrid (December 5, 2014). "To Get Off Russia's Blacklist, GitHub Has Blocked Access To Pages That Highlight Suicide". TechCrunch. from the original on March 21, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  36. ^ "roskomnadzor/2014-10-21-roskomnadzor.md". GitHub. October 21, 2014. from the original on December 5, 2014. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  37. ^ Geraci, Jesse (June 9, 2016). "github/roskomnadzor - README.md". GitHub. from the original on June 15, 2017. Retrieved October 9, 2016.
  38. ^ Geraci, Jesse (February 20, 2015). "github/roskomnadzor - README.md". GitHub. from the original on January 4, 2017. Retrieved October 9, 2016.
  39. ^ Murdock, Jason (October 10, 2016). "Turkey blocks Google, Microsoft and Dropbox services to 'suppress' mass email leaks". International Business Times. from the original on October 11, 2016. Retrieved October 10, 2016.
  40. ^ "Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive cloud services blocked in Turkey following leaks". Turkey Blocks. October 8, 2016. from the original on December 9, 2016. Retrieved October 9, 2016.
  41. ^ Sozeri, Efe Kerem (October 12, 2016). "How hacktivist group RedHack gamed Turkey's censorship regime". Daily Dot. from the original on October 13, 2016. Retrieved October 12, 2016.

External links edit

January 01, 1970
censorship, github, github, been, target, censorship, from, governments, using, methods, ranging, from, local, internet, service, provider, blocks, intermediary, blocking, using, methods, such, hijacking, middle, attacks, denial, service, attacks, github, serv. GitHub has been the target of censorship from governments using methods ranging from local Internet service provider blocks intermediary blocking using methods such as DNS hijacking and man in the middle attacks and denial of service attacks on GitHub s servers from countries including China India Iraq Russia and Turkey In all of these cases GitHub has been eventually unblocked after backlash from users and technology businesses or compliance from GitHub Contents 1 Background 2 China 2 1 DNS hijacking 2 1 1 Blockage 2 1 2 Criticism 2 2 MITM attack 2 2 1 Attack 2 2 2 Rationale 2 3 DDoS attack 3 India 3 1 ISP blockage 3 2 Impact 3 3 Criticism 4 Russia 4 1 ISP blockage 4 2 Banned content 4 3 Response 5 Turkey 6 Notes 7 References 8 External linksBackground editGitHub is a web based Git repository hosting service and is primarily used to host the source code of software facilitate project management and provide distributed revision control functionality of Git access control wikis and bug tracking 1 As of June 2023 GitHub reports having over 100 million users and over 330 million repositories 2 It offers free accounts a pastebin service called Gist and free website hosting under its github io domain The GitHub terms of service prohibits illegal use and it reserves the right to remove content at its discretion 3 Users can fork copy and individually develop other projects which GitHub does not automatically take down when served DMCA takedown notices 4 GitHub uses HTTPS for its connections making data more secure against interception from third parties China editMain article Internet censorship in China China heavily regulates Internet traffic and has blocked many international Internet companies including Facebook and Twitter 5 In addition Western businesses have said that these restrictions hurt their business by reducing access to information such as from search engines and those using VPNs 6 In 2013 the country started blocking GitHub and it was met by protests among Chinese programmers 7 GreatFire a Chinese anti censorship organization has attempted to circumvent the Great Firewall of China using mirror websites However the links to these pages were posted using GitHub which brings the risk of the site being blocked along with the mirrors In a previous incident HSBC bank s Chinese operation was taken offline when the Akamai network was targeted for hosting GreatFire org websites 8 DNS hijacking edit Blockage edit nbsp Test results from viewDNS info showing that GitHub was blocked from within China On January 21 2013 GitHub was blocked in China using DNS hijacking It was reported that the attack was carried out in response to political information posted on the platform 9 Confirming the block a spokesperson for GitHub said It does appear that we re at least being partly blocked by the Great Firewall of China a 10 The block was lifted on January 23 2013 after an online protest on Sina Weibo 11 Criticism edit Kai Fu Lee brought attention to the block after posting about it on Sina Weibo He derided the block saying Blocking GitHub is unjustifiable and will only derail the nation s programmers from the world while bringing about a loss in competitiveness and insight Lee s post was shared over 80 000 times 11 The Next Web called the block unfortunate saying that Chinese developers will have to play around with workarounds or find an alternative service when they want to work with their peers around the world 10 MITM attack edit Attack edit nbsp An example of the warning users in China received from browsers when trying to access GitHub with the self signed certificate On January 26 2013 GitHub users in China experienced a man in the middle attack in which attackers could have intercepted traffic between the site and its users in China The mechanism of the attack was through a fake SSL certificate 12 Users attempting to access GitHub received a warning of an invalid SSL certificate which due to being signed by an unknown authority was quickly detected 13 A spokesperson for GitHub said Early last week it appeared that GitHub was being at least partially blocked by the Great Firewall of China After a couple days it appeared that GitHub was no longer being blocked 12 NETRESEC performed forensics of the attack and determined that it was indeed an attack due to the large number of router hops involved 6 and because the user submitting the packet capture was from China 14 This attack was performed again on March 26 2020 on GitHub Pages and March 27 2020 on GitHub com 15 16 Rationale edit GreatFire speculated that the attack was related to a popular White House petition calling for the denial of entry to the United States of the architects of the Great Firewall of China 13 The petition linked to a Gist containing names of 3 of the architects and their contact information 17 GreatFire also said that since GitHub is HTTPS only Chinese authorities can t block individual pages and have to completely block the website which helps explain why they would have to resort to the attack 13 InformationWeek noted the economic difficulty related to blocking GitHub What makes GitHub interesting from a censorship point of view is that it combines a critical business service collaborative coding with social interaction 12 DDoS attack edit This section needs expansion with See talk page You can help by adding to it June 2015 On March 26 2015 GitHub was the target of a distributed denial of service DDoS attack originating from China It targeted two anti censorship projects GreatFire and cn nytimes the latter including instructions on how to access the Chinese version of The New York Times 18 GitHub blocked China based IP addresses from visiting these repositories If a visitor comes from China the page would show Repository unavailable because of the Chinese Internet Blacklist Based on GitHub they are doing this so that our users in that jurisdiction may continue to have access to GitHub to collaborate and build software 19 They are now having a gov takedowns repository to record all the government requirements they could show 20 India editMain article Internet censorship in India India selectively censors websites at the federal and state levels This is enforced by the Information Technology Act 2000 as well as licensing requirements for Internet service providers ISPs Critics such as Rajeev Chandrasekhar have noted the vagueness of these regulations and the Centre for Internet and Society found that ISPs tended to over comply with takedown requests 21 ISP blockage edit On December 17 2014 the Indian Department of Telecom issued an order to ISPs to block 32 websites 22 The notice was made public on December 31 2014 and it included GitHub GitHub s Gist Vimeo the Internet Archive and various pastebin services 23 Direction to block Internet Website To All Internet Service Licensees Under the powers conferred by Section 69A of the Information Technology Act 2000 and under the Information Technology Procedures and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public Rules 2009 it has been decided to immediately block the access to the following 32 URLs Department of Telecommunications 23 The block order was confirmed on Twitter by Arvind Gupta the national head of the ruling party BJP and was attributed to a suggestion by India s Anti Terrorism Squad in response to content by the Islamic extremist group ISIS Gupta also stated that websites that cooperated with the investigation were being unblocked 24 On January 2 2015 the Ministry of Communications issued a statement that it will be unblocking 4 of the websites including GitHub s Gist and said that it will consider unblocking the remaining websites once they complied Explaining its rationale the ministry stated Many of these websites do not require any authentication for pasting any material on them These websites were being used frequently for pasting communicating jihadi content 25 Gulshan Rai of the CERT In agency of the ministry said that the order came from the Mumbai Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate following an interrogation of Arif Majeed an ISIS recruit 26 On January 4 2015 a GitHub spokesperson said that some users were still having trouble accessing the site and that GitHub has attempted to reach out to the Indian government but is still unclear about the cause of the block They said that restoring access to the developer community in India was their top priority and that they would like to work with the Indian government to establish a transparent process for identifying unlawful content restore access and ensure that GitHub continues to remain available in the future without interruption 27 Impact edit The Times of India reported blockage for Indian users by the ISPs Vodafone BSNL and Hathway but it still had access using Airtel 22 Because the order only told ISPs what to block and not how the effectiveness of blocking access varied The blocking was unreliable and seemed to be occurring at multiple layers even within the same ISP Blocking methods included IP blocking the use of a proxy server and DNS blocking Methods for gaining access ranged from using an alternate DNS server to installing circumvention software 28 Criticism edit nbsp A poster by the Free Software Foundation Tamil Nadu protesting the blocks using the hashtag GOIBlocks Regarding the blocks TechCrunch remarked that the addition of GitHub is one of the more head scratching decisions and anticipated an uproar considering its importance in the tech industry They also called it embarrassing in the context of Prime Minister Narendra Modi s Make in India campaign to promote India as a destination for information technology 29 Prasanth Sugathan of the Software Freedom and Law Center called the blocks short sighted saying that If you block one website terrorists can always use another one Such a move only inconveniences the daily users Twitter users protested using the hashtag GOIblocks and recirculated a hypocritical message by Modi from 2012 condemning blanket blocking of websites 26 Anonymous of India also posted several threats against the government but did not take any action 25 Russia editMain article Internet censorship in Russia The Russian government blacklists websites that include child pornography drug related material advocacy of suicide extremist material and other illegal content under the Russian Internet Restriction Bill to protect children This list is maintained by Roscomnadzor Russia s regulatory agency 30 ISP blockage edit nbsp The block message Russian GitHub users saw when trying to access the website on December 2 2014 b On December 2 2014 Roscomnadzor blocked GitHub due to it hosting various copies of a suicide manual Because GitHub uses HTTPS which encrypts data between a user s computer and GitHub s servers Internet service providers ISPs were forced to block the whole website instead of the pages involved Complying ISPs included Beeline MTS MGTS and Megafon Maxim Ksenzov the Deputy Head of Roscomnadzor said in a statement that the block was due to GitHub not complying with earlier takedown requests for the manual on October 10 2014 31 GitHub was also momentarily blocked on October 2 2014 until the original copy of the manual was deleted by its uploader 32 Banned content edit The manual in question was posted on March 23 2014 and details 31 methods of suicide in Russian c It was added to a repository for a software library used for working with Windows filesystems and was forked by several users 33 The original copy was deleted by the owner on October 2 2014 after numerous GitHub users complained because of a block by Roscomnadzor d 33 34 TechCrunch remarked that the manual seemed to be written as satire and includes methods such as biting your tongue joining the military or getting a good gun from a policeman 35 The takedown targeted the manual and its copies as well as a reposted blog entry about suicide 36 Response edit GitHub complied and blocked access to the content within Russia saying that they were working to get reinstated Citing its terms of service GitHub elaborated that you must not in the use of the Service violate any laws in your jurisdiction including but not limited to copyright or trademark laws 35 GitHub also created an official repository titled roskomnadzor for the purpose of posting takedown notices from the regulator It was later moved to gov takedowns after a request from China on June 9 2016 37 In the readme of the repository GitHub states that they are concerned about Internet censorship and believe in transparency to document the potential for chilling effects They also warn that the presence of a notice is only for documentation and that GitHub does not pass any judgement on their validity 38 Turkey editSee also Internet censorship in Turkey nbsp Network measurements by Turkey Blocks confirming the time at which GitHub was blocked On October 8 2016 following the leak of emails of Turkish Minister Berat Albayrak by RedHack the Information and Communication Technologies Authority BTK ordered ISPs to block several file sharing websites including Dropbox Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive 39 The censorship monitoring watchdog Turkey Blocks observed that GitHub was blocked the following morning and associated administrative orders were subsequently posted by the BTK stating that access had been officially restricted 40 Software that depended on GitHub reported errors such as Font Awesome and Homebrew Participants in Startup Istanbul week also complained about the unavailability of infrastructure The GitHub hashtag became one of Twitter s top trends in Turkey According to The Daily Dot RedHack purposefully spread the emails using multiple services expecting Turkey to block them so that the Streisand effect could be utilized GitHub was unblocked 18 hours later 41 Notes edit nbsp Internet portal nbsp Freedom of speech portal nbsp Programming portal nbsp Software portal The Next Web and GreatFire both claim that it was fully blocked however 10 The text of the page consists of 4 reasons why the website breaks laws under the Russian Federation and why therefore the contents of the website are blocked The manual itself seems to be a translation of a text originating on Usenet However because the original was forked and Git keeps a history of changes the file was still accessible on GitHub References edit Stephanidis Constantine 2020 HCI International 2020 Late Breaking Papers Cognition Learning and Games 22nd HCI International Conference HCII 2020 Copenhagen Denmark July 19 24 2020 Proceedings Cham Switzerland Springer Nature p 355 ISBN 978 3 030 60127 0 About GitHub Archived from the original on June 28 2023 Retrieved June 28 2023 GitHub Terms of Service GitHub Archived from the original on June 24 2015 Retrieved June 27 2015 Specifically terms A8 and G7 DMCA Takedown Policy GitHub Archived from the original on July 1 2015 Retrieved June 27 2015 Wei Sisi December 17 2014 Inside the Firewall Tracking the News That China Blocks ProPublica Archived from the original on June 5 2015 Retrieved June 27 2015 Chin Josh February 12 2015 China Internet Restrictions Hurting Business Western Companies Say Wall Street Journal Blogs Archived from the original on July 4 2015 Retrieved June 27 2015 Roberts Margaret E 2018 Censored Distraction and Diversion Inside China s Great Firewall Princeton NJ Princeton University Press p 114 ISBN 978 0 691 17886 8 Silbert Sean November 26 2014 Routing around the Great Firewall of China LA Times Archived from the original on June 30 2015 Retrieved June 27 2015 Fingar Thomas Oi Jean C 2020 Fateful Decisions Choices That Will Shape China s Future Stanford University Press ISBN 978 1 5036 1223 5 a b c Protalinski Emil January 21 2013 The Chinese government appears to be blocking GitHub via DNS Update Investigation underway The Next Web Archived from the original on April 14 2015 Retrieved April 9 2015 a b Kan Michael January 23 2013 GitHub unblocked in China after former Google head slams its censorship Computer World Archived from the original on March 30 2015 Retrieved April 9 2015 a b c Claburn Thomas January 30 2013 China s GitHub Censorship Dilemma InformationWeek Archived from the original on July 3 2015 Retrieved June 27 2015 a b c martin January 30 2013 China GitHub and the man in the middle GreatFire Archived from the original on August 19 2016 Retrieved June 27 2015 Hjelmvik Erik February 2 2013 Forensics of Chinese MITM on GitHub NETRESEC Blog Archived from the original on June 30 2015 Retrieved June 27 2015 Hacker is deploying large scale MITM attack via domestic backbone March 27 2020 Archived from the original on March 26 2020 Retrieved March 27 2020 GitHub 遭遇中间人攻击 访问报证书错误 OSCHINA www oschina net Retrieved March 27 2020 Muncaster Phil January 31 2013 Great Firewall architects fingered for GitHub attack The Register Archived from the original on June 30 2015 Retrieved June 27 2015 Anthony Sebastian March 30 2015 GitHub battles largest DDoS in site s history targeted at anti censorship tools ars technica Archived from the original on January 2 2019 Retrieved January 1 2019 Horwitz Josh June 28 2016 China s fierce censors try a new tactic with GitHub asking nicely Quartz Retrieved December 25 2020 hubot gov takedowns GitHub Retrieved December 25 2020 Patry Melody November 21 2013 India Digital freedom under threat Online censorship index Archived from the original on November 4 2016 Retrieved April 2 2015 a b Saxena Anupam December 31 2014 Pastebin Dailymotion Github blocked after DoT order Report The Times of India Archived from the original on March 2 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 a b Blue Violet December 31 2014 India blocks 32 websites including GitHub Internet Archive Pastebin Vimeo ZDNet Archived from the original on April 2 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 Ghoshal Abhimanyu December 31 2014 GitHub Vimeo and 30 more sites blocked in India over content from ISIS The Next Web Archived from the original on April 4 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 a b Sharma Ravi January 2 2015 Indian government unblocks Vimeo Dailymotion 2 other websites The Times of India Archived from the original on February 8 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 a b Arora Kim January 1 2015 Government blocks 32 websites to check ISIS propaganda The Times of India Tech Archived from the original on January 4 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 Orsini Lauren January 2 2015 India Unblocks GitHub Three Other Websites readwrite Archived from the original on March 20 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 Srikanth Kaustubh June 1 2015 Technical Observations About Recent Internet Censorship In India The Huffington Post Archived from the original on May 21 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 Russell Jon December 31 2014 India s Government Asks ISPs To Block GitHub Vimeo And 30 Other Websites Updated TechCrunch Archived from the original on March 26 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 Khazan Olga November 9 2012 Russia s secret new Internet blacklist The Washington Post Archived from the original on May 11 2015 Retrieved April 2 2015 Lunden Ingrid December 3 2014 Russia Blacklists Blocks GitHub Over Pages That Refer To Suicide TechCrunch Archived from the original on March 27 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 Lihachyov Nikita October 2 2014 AliExpress 2ch i GitHub popali v reestr zapreshyonnyh sajtov AliExpress 2ch and GitHub put on the register of banned sites TJournal in Russian Archived from the original on April 25 2015 Retrieved April 9 2015 a b Create suicide txt GitHub amdf objidlib March 23 2014 Archived from the original on June 27 2015 Retrieved April 8 2015 Delete suicide txt GitHub amdf objidlib October 2 2014 Archived from the original on June 27 2015 Retrieved April 9 2015 a b Lunden Ingrid December 5 2014 To Get Off Russia s Blacklist GitHub Has Blocked Access To Pages That Highlight Suicide TechCrunch Archived from the original on March 21 2015 Retrieved April 1 2015 roskomnadzor 2014 10 21 roskomnadzor md GitHub October 21 2014 Archived from the original on December 5 2014 Retrieved April 1 2015 Geraci Jesse June 9 2016 github roskomnadzor README md GitHub Archived from the original on June 15 2017 Retrieved October 9 2016 Geraci Jesse February 20 2015 github roskomnadzor README md GitHub Archived from the original on January 4 2017 Retrieved October 9 2016 Murdock Jason October 10 2016 Turkey blocks Google Microsoft and Dropbox services to suppress mass email leaks International Business Times Archived from the original on October 11 2016 Retrieved October 10 2016 Dropbox Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive cloud services blocked in Turkey following leaks Turkey Blocks October 8 2016 Archived from the original on December 9 2016 Retrieved October 9 2016 Sozeri Efe Kerem October 12 2016 How hacktivist group RedHack gamed Turkey s censorship regime Daily Dot Archived from the original on October 13 2016 Retrieved October 12 2016 External links editGitHub blog GitHub status messages Archived 2016 07 02 at the Wayback Machine gov takedowns on GitHub Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Censorship of GitHub amp oldid 1221239131 China, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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