China’s firewall that tries to sanitise web browsing is much more porous than previously thought, says a study.Carried out by US researchers outside China, it found that the firewall often failed to block what the Chinese government finds objectionable.The firewall was least effective when lots of Chinese web users were online.Often, said the study, the idea of the firewall was more effective than the technology at discouraging talk about banned subjects.The study, carried out by graduate student Earl Barr and colleagues in the computer science department of UC Davis and the University of New Mexico, exploited the workings of the Chinese firewall to investigate its effectiveness.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6990842.stm
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137143-c,internetnetworking/article.html
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9036118For more information on the study, see http://technewsreview.com.au/article.php?article=2652