This post describes our analysis of China’s “Great Cannon,” our term for an attack tool that we identify as separate from, but co-located with, the Great Firewall of China. The first known usage of the Great Cannon is in the recent large-scale novel DDoS attack on both GitHub and servers used by GreatFire.org.

Contained are links to a set of 9,054 sensitive Chinese keywords, which combine 13 existing lists. These keywords may be helpful to researchers who are searching for censored content in Chinese or testing for network interference.

This report is part of a series which analyzes regionally-based keyword censorship in LINE, a mobile messaging application developed by LINE Corporation. The most recent update to the censorship keyword list include a number of new entries as well as the introduction of regular expressions for more advanced keyword matching.

In this report, we update the results of our June 2014 network measurement tests in Iraq in reaction to the ongoing insurgency in the country, and analyze two mobile applications, FireChat and Dawn of Glad Tidings.