Internet Anomalies in China 2014: What Happened and Why

In 2014, mainland China experienced a series of internet anomalies that left many wondering what was happening and why.

China's internet censorship system, known as the Great Firewall, was in place to block access to certain websites and online content deemed sensitive by the government.

The anomalies began in March 2014, when users reported difficulties accessing popular websites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

The Great Firewall was not functioning properly, allowing users to access blocked websites for a short period.

On January 21, 2014, a series of internet anomalies occurred in mainland China.

At 09:00, many of Tencent's online services failed, but this was later clarified to have no relation to the subsequent nationwide incident.

The real trouble started at 15:15 when China's DNS servers began malfunctioning, causing many sites ending in .com, .org, and .net to be resolved to a wrong IP address.

This affected about two-thirds of the country's websites, with sites ending in .cn remaining unaffected.

By 15:39, the malfunctioning stopped, and by 16:00, internet service providers started manual flushes of the DNS cache to remove the poisoned entries.

Most sites were back to normal by 16:50, although it could take up to 12 hours for the DNS cache to completely flush.

The events leading up to the incident were a series of unfortunate circumstances that ultimately contributed to the outcome.

A critical system failure occurred on January 10th, which caused a ripple effect throughout the network.

The team had been working tirelessly to resolve the issue but was hindered by a lack of necessary documentation.

The company's IT department had been aware of the potential for a system failure for months but failed to address the issue.

A routine maintenance check on January 8th revealed a discrepancy in the system's code but was deemed minor at the time.

The team's lead engineer had expressed concerns about the system's stability but was overruled by management.

On January 21, a major incident occurred, starting with a failure of many of Tencent's online services at 09:00.

Tencent later clarified that this failure was unrelated to the subsequent nationwide incident.

At 15:15, China's DNS servers began malfunctioning, affecting about two-thirds of the country's websites.

Many sites ending in .com, .org, and .net were resolved to a wrong IP address, 65.49.2.178.

The .cn top level domain was not affected by the malfunction.

The malfunctioning stopped by 15:39, and by 16:00, internet service providers started manual flushes of the DNS cache to remove the poisoned entries.

By 16:50, most sites were back to normal, although it could take up to 12 hours for the DNS cache to completely flush.

Theories surrounding the internet anomalies in mainland China in 2014 are varied, but one thing is clear: the incident was not caused by a simple hacking operation. Researchers from Kingsoft Antivirus believe that the IP address 65.49.2.178, owned by DIT, was involved in hacking operations, but this theory is widely questioned.

The scale of such an attack would be enormous, requiring the simultaneous dysfunction of all high-level DNS servers in China, which is beyond the ability of most hackers. Dong Fang of Qihoo and Ye Xuhui of the Hong Kong ISP Association, among others, argue that a misconfiguration by the ISPs could have caused the issue.

The Great Firewall, a system designed to block unauthorized internet access, is also implicated in the incident. Reuters and Bloomberg report that the attack was caused by a misconfiguration of the Great Firewall, and GreatFire.org, which monitors the system, shows "decisive evidence" that the incident was indeed caused by the firewall.

The hacking theory surrounding the IP address 65.49.2.178 is widely questioned by experts.

Many researchers believe that the IP address has carried out attacks, but Bill Xia of DIT denied any allegations of hacking.

Dong Fang of Qihoo (China) and Ye Xuhui of Hong Kong ISP Association point out that an attack of such scale would be beyond the ability of most hackers.

However, a misconfiguration of the Great Firewall could have caused the issue, as reported by Reuters and Bloomberg.

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