The Great Firewall of China is a topic of frequent mention but often not fully comprehended. It stands as one of the most advanced and enigmatic censorship systems globally, affecting how over a billion individuals access the internet, shaping the creation of privacy and proxy tools, and continuously evolving to pose challenges to researchers, developers, and policymakers.
Jackson Sippe, a PhD researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, specializes in understanding national-scale censorship systems. Jackson recently co-led an innovative study that analyzed a previously undocumented technique used by the Great Firewall, which discreetly disrupted fully encrypted proxy protocols across China for over a year.
In a discussion with Gregor Vand, Jackson explores the technical workings of the Great Firewall, the blocking event from 2021–2023, the popcount-based detection algorithm his team reverse-engineered, and the ongoing battle between censorship and circumvention. The implications of these findings for the future of an open internet are also examined.
Gregor Vand is a technologist focused on security, having served as CTO in various cybersecurity and software engineering companies. Based in Singapore, he is accessible via his profile at vand.hk or on LinkedIn.
For a transcript of this episode, please [click here](http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/SED1892-Great-FIrewall.txt).
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