The new Green-Dam Youth Escort allegedly contains stolen programming code. From AP:
A California company claims that the Internet-filtering software China has mandated for all new personal computers sold there contains stolen programming code.
Solid Oak Software of Santa Barbara said Friday that parts of its filtering software, which is designed for parents, are being used in the “Green Dam-Youth Escort” filtering software that must be packaged with all computers sold in China from July 1.
Solid Oak’s founder, Brian Milburn, said he plans to seek an injunction against the Chinese developer that built the software, but acknowledged that it’s new legal terrain for his company.
“I don’t know how far you can try and reach into China and try to stop stuff like this,” he said in an interview. “We’re still trying to assess what they’re doing.”
A phone number for the Chinese developer could not immediately be located. A call by The Associated Press to China’s embassy in the U.S. after business hours Friday went unanswered.
Update: Protest continues against the new Green Dam-Youth Escort filtering software which the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has ordered installed on every computer sold inside China. Andrew Jacobs writes for The New York Times:
Filtering software that the government has mandated for all new computers in China is so technically flawed that outsiders can easily infiltrate a user’s machine to monitor Internet activity, steal personal data or plant destructive viruses, experts who have studied the program say.
“It contains serious vulnerabilities, which is especially worrisome given how widely the software will be adopted,” said J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan who examined the program. “What we found was only the tip of the iceberg.”
[…]Software engineers who have examined Green Dam in recent days say it is designed to do more than filter out adult content. Deep inside the program, they say, are data files with the sorts of search terms and key words the authorities use to block certain topics, including Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement, and the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
See previous CDT coverage of the Green Dam-Youth Escort controversy here, here, and here.
