It turns out that Green Dam, the censorware that China want’s installed on all machines sold within its borders, is crap. The security researchers who wrote the article in that link found many major vulnerabilities within twelve hours of examining the software. First, it has buffer overlows, which can be exploited just by getting a user to go to a site with a long URL. It captures the URL from the browser and compares it to a black list – the buffer it holds a URL in is apparently fixed length, and less than the maximum length of a URL. Good to know that the developers apparently haven’t learned anything from a decade of widespread C++ exploitation. Also, it’s update mechnism allows arbitrary code execution by design.

The sad thing is that the software itself is pointless. Client software, on a client machine, can be defeated easily by the client. In fact, it has an uninstaller that appears to actually work, so the user doesn’t have to jump through the hoops that most malware would make them. On top of that, if it uses black lists to restrict the habits of would be surfers then its effectiveness is limited. In essance what China has done is mandate that a large number of their users expose their computers to exploitation while not seriously impeding those that want to view objectionable content. All this is going to get them is the ill will of their own citizens.

~ Joshbw