Green Dam is China's initiative to install censorware on every Windows PC purchased after July 1st. There has been over 7 million downloads of the software, schools and universities already have it running on their systems. This extends the national-level filtering system to the endpoints of each system. A blacklist of sites will be downloaded to the Green Dam client and users may add their banned sites to the application.
Dell as of June 8th is determining whether it will include the Green Dam software in it's
distribution.
Researchers at the University of Michigan published a paper on remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities in the Green Dam software. They sited programming errors in SurfGd.dll that allows for a buffer overflow that would allow the browser to download malware.
China has acknowledge this flaws and is expecting to release a patch.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Solid Oak software Inc... said that it has found pieces of it's "Cybersitter" software embedded in the "Green Dam" software.
The Chinese Daily reported that the General Manager, Bryan Zhang, of Jinhui Computer System Engineering Company, the author of Green Dam said that, "It is not responsible to crack somebody's software and publish the details, which are commercial secrets."
He also denied that the software contained any theft of the "Cybersitter" code. But said the two did maintain a similar list of blacklisted porn websites.
Every country including the U.S. and Australia have been struggling with privacy rights over internet content. The U.S has the Children's Internet Protection Act HR4577 and Australia has plans to test the implementation of a nation wide content filter with an opt-out feature.
In the U.S. HR 2271: Global Online Freedom Act of 2009 is an act that is in committee that prevent any U.S. business from cooperating with repressive governments in transforming the Internet into a tool of censorship and surveillance, to promote freedom of expression on the internet.
Links:
Analysis of the Green Dam Censorware System
OpenNet Initiative on Green Dam
The Sydney Morning Herald - Web Censorship plan heads to dead end
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