China’s Great Firewall is a complex and enigmatic censorship system impacting over a billion people’s internet use, shaping global privacy tools, and evolving in ways that challenge various professionals. Jackson Sippe, a PhD researcher from the University of Colorado Boulder, examines national-scale censorship systems. He recently co-led a study on a previously unnoticed GFW method that disrupted encrypted proxy protocols in China for over a year. In this episode, Jackson talks with Gregor Vand about the technical workings of the Great Firewall, the 2021–2023 blocking event, a detection algorithm his team reverse-engineered, the cat-and-mouse game of censorship and evasion, and implications for internet freedom.
Gregor Vand, based in Singapore, is a security-focused technologist with experience as a CTO in cybersecurity and engineering companies. He can be reached through vand.hk or LinkedIn.
For the transcript of this episode, click here.
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