Green Dam Deadline Remains Unchanged Despite U.S. Objections

The Green Dam mandate has drawn broad criticism both inside and outside of China since it was first made public earlier this month. Chinese authorities claim that Green Dam is necessary to limit young people's exposure to "harmful information," but University of Michigan computer scientists have identified significant vulnerabilities in the software that could lead to the installation of harmful information in the form of malware.

Although the makers of Green Dam, Jinhui Computer System Engineering and Dazheng Human Language Technology, updated the software in response to these findings, the three computer scientists who analyzed the software, Scott Wolchok, Randy Yao, and J. Alex Halderman, maintain that vulnerabilities remain. "[E]ven after the recent fix, it is still possible for any Web site a Green Dam user visits to exploit other security problems to take control of the computer," they state in their analysis.

And such concern isn't merely academic: Proof-of-concept exploit code for hacking computers that run Green Dam has been available online for more than a week on Milw0rm.com and, as of Monday, on Wikileaks.

Further fueling the controversy, Solid Oak Software in the United States has said that Green Dam includes copyrighted code from its Web-filtering program, CyberSitter, and has warned computer makers of potential legal liability if they ship computers with the allegedly infringing software. The Green Dam update appears to have removed some, if not all, of the disputed files.

Chinese Internet users, led by noted artist Ai Weiwei, are planning an Internet boycott on July 1 to protest the government's plan.

InformationWeek Analytics has published an analysis of the current state of identity management. Download the report here (registration required).