DNS servers located in China have apparently been responsible for interrupted access for users in Chile and the U.S. to websites that are blocked by the Great Firewall. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
A networking error has caused computers in Chile and the U.S. to come under the control of the Great Firewall of China, redirecting Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube users to Chinese servers.
Security experts are not sure exactly how this happened, but it appears that at least one ISP recently began fetching high-level DNS (domain name server) information from what’s known as a root DNS server, based in China. That server, operated out of China by Swedish service provider Netnod, returned DNS information intended for Chinese users, effectively spreading China’s network censorship overseas. China tightly controls access to a number of Web sites, using technology known colloquially as the Great Firewall of China.
The issue was reported Wednesday by Mauricio Ereche, a DNS admin with NIC Chile, who found that an unnamed local ISP reported that DNS queries for sites such as Facebook.com, Twitter.com and YouTube.com — all of which have been blocked in China — were being redirected to bogus addresses.
