Dam Burst Tool Disables China's Green Dam Censorware

An anonymous reader writes "The infamous Green Dam censorship software has suffered yet another blow. As ZDNet explains, Dam Burst, a tool released by security researcher Jon Oberheide, allows unprivileged users to disable the censorware by removing the hooks that enable it to monitor and block user activity, effectively restoring running applications to their original uncensored state. While the Dam Burst software is currently available at Oberheide's website, community mirrors will undoubtedly be necessary to avoid blocking by the Great Firewall."

Re:Great, but..

[rvw]

Dont tell: you probably haven't RTFA????

The Chinese government originally mandated that Green Dam be shipped on all new PCs but this pre-installation has been delayed.

TFA is wrong

[jipn4]

The Chinese government originally mandated that Green Dam be shipped on all new PCs but this pre-installation has been delayed.

The Chinese government never mandated that Green Dam be shipped "on" or "pre-installed". It mandated that it ship with new PCs. It was sufficient simply to stick a CD in the shipping box, although preinstalling the software was also OK. Manufacturers could decide how to satisfy the requirement. It was up to the end user to decide whether to use it or not. The idea was to give parents the option of using filtering software for their children. If they didn't want to use it, they didn't have to.

The software described in TFA is no more a blow for freedom than software that lets kids get around NetNanny.

Re:Why so complicated?

[oahazmatt]

Can't you just install a clean OS?

C'mon. This is China. It's not like you can just walk to a street corner and get a copy of XP.

Re:

[andymadigan]

And they really don't want to be bothered with being able to search for "democracy" or "freedom"? Yes, I can see the Chinese people really have a say in their government.

Re:

[jijacob]

I bet you can download ubuntu though. And burn it to a CD. If not ubuntu there are a significant number of lesser-known free operating systems.

Re:

[Smivs]

I bet you can download ubuntu though. And burn it to a CD.

Yes, but ubuntu is free open-source software and no-one in China knows what "Free" or "Open" mean.

Re:

[Smivs]

Yes, but ubuntu is free open-source software and no-one in China knows what "Free" or "Open" mean.

You are a dumb-ass. Not to mention a bigot.

My comment was aimed at the consequences of the repressive politics of China, not it's people, so please don't think of me as a bigot. I am grateful for the freedoms and open-ness of our society, and I merely chose to express my view through irony.

Re:

[EspressoFreak]

Actually, you can.

I'll wait for the Ang Lee Documentary

[Ukab the Great]

"Bursting Dam, Flying Dutch Boy"

Re:

[tobiah]

humorless mods

but you'd still be doing something illegal

[lapsed]

If Green Dam software were required in China (and it's not yet clear that it will be), disabling it might be trivial but the act of disabling it would open the user to prosecution. A Chinese user could 'accidentally' click on a site they should not have seen but it's hard to see disabling Green Dam software as anything but deliberate. Having said that, I think Oberheide's work is commendable.

Man in the middle?

[Anonymous Coward]

If China has so much control over traffic, what is to keep them from simply running a man in the middle attack,
and redirecting your download or website request to an identical looking trojan download?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

If China has so much control over traffic, what is to keep them from simply running a man in the middle attack,
and redirecting your download or website request to an identical looking trojan download?

Thank you very much for the idea.

-- The Chinese Government

Re:

[VoltageX]

distributing this via magnet link might be a good idea.

power to the people

[randizzle]

well done Mr Oberheide.

Re:

[moon3]

If you remove local firewall you raise flags on the outer "Great firewall", so this will be seen as a breach anyway, seams to me that local filtering software is only the first stopper layer to reduce number of outer hammerers -- having a local firewall reduces the number of breakers of the main China filtering layer at any given time, so the Chinese internet gestapo can better focus on the particular violators.

Man in the middle...

[ZarathustraDK]

Clippy: "I see you're trying to install some nice software, would you like some uniformed men to help you with that? Yes, Ok, Absolutely!"

How do I get Green Dam?

[Runaway1956]

"As a pleasant side effect, disabling the Green Dam components within a running process actually increases the security of the end host as the vulnerable code paths within the Green Dam software are no longer exploitable by an attacker. "

That being true, I want to install Green Dam so that I can use Dam Burst. Awesome!! Our benevolent brothers in China have helped to make teh intartubez secure!!!

Re:

[Runaway1956]

http://www.lssw365.net/index.php/List/index/pid/2 [lssw365.net]

The NERVE of those Chinese! Their site is written in CHINESE!! Don't they know that half the world is monolingual? oh - wait - wut did I just say? Whoops, they ARE almost half the world!

Re:

[koxkoxkox]

Some of them do, and they risk their lives. You can find a lot of stories of bloggers who disappeared in the middle of the night not to be seen again.

The majority of the people don't want to risk their live just to be able to speak of abstract concepts. The censorship is well known of everyone, but is a minor inconvenience for most.

Mirrors Galore!

[TrentTheThief]

http://www.crystalwind.com/DamBurst-1.2.exe [crystalwind.com]

Hey! There's that file again!

[TrentTheThief]

https://files.dreamhost.com/94381/dl/DamBurst-1.2.exe [dreamhost.com]