Citizen Lab Research Fellow Jason Q. Ng commented on the effect that China’s real name registration policy will have on virtual private networks (VPNs) and self-censorship.

The document is a memo circulated among the Five Eyes, a network of English-speaking intelligence agencies. Though the document does not name the hackers whose data were stolen, it made it clear that they had ties to the Chinese government, and were spying on human rights defenders and Uyghur activists in the country.

Slate’s discussion on the proliferation of Chinese messaging applications worldwide was informed by Citizen Lab research report “Asia Chats: Analyzing Information Controls & Privacy in Asian Messaging Applications.”

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.

Citizen Lab Fellow Jason Q. Ng published a number of articles on this month on Internet censorship in China.

A new report, entitled “Communities @ Risk: Targeted Digital Threats Against Civil Society,” involved 10 civil society groups that enrolled as study subjects over a period of four years. The study sought to obtain greater visibility into an often overlooked digital risk environment affecting–whether they know it or not–many of society’s most essential institutions.

We investigate what keywords might trigger censorship via automatic review in Sina Weibo and followed the pathways a typical censored post might take on Chinese social media.

Cyber Stewards Network partner Tibet Action Institute has launched a new program aimed at getting ordinary users of mobile and online technology in Tibet to adopt safe habits capable of preventing malware and viral attacks. The ‘Cyber Superhero’ website contains information that is particularly relevant for Tibetans living in exile, whose online and mobile communications with friends and family in Tibet are often the subject of security intrusions and malware attacks by Chinese government officials.

In this post we report updates on how LINE, KakaoTalk, OneDrive and Flickr are being disrupted in China. We find that Flickr and OneDrive remain consistently blocked, but LINE and KakaoTalk show inconsistent fluctuation between accessibility and inaccessibility. We also analyze security and privacy of FireChat and test accessibility of the service in China.