China’s ‘Great Firewall’ Leak Suggests Dissent in the Ranks, Expert Says

A massive leak of more than 100,000 documents revealing the inner workings of a Chinese company that appears to sell authoritarian governments tools to censor and surveil internet users was recently posted online. Bill Xia, president of Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT), told The Epoch Times the leak was deliberate and likely internal.

DIT, founded in 2001, produces Freegate and other anti-censorship software that Chinese netizens use to circumvent the so-called Great Firewall put in place by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“This information is leaked on a large scale. This is also what we’ve seen in the past year or two, with many grassroots people coming forward to expose the CCP and things happening in China,” Xia said on Sept. 13.

The files belong to Geedge Networks, which presents itself as a cybersecurity company. Geedge did not respond to an inquiry from The Epoch Times.

Researchers with InterSecLab said a technical analysis of the leaked documents revealed that Geedge has contracts with the governments of Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Burma (also known as Myanmar), and at least one unidentified government, as well as provincial-level authorities in Xinjiang to provide censorship and surveillance technologies.

Among the leaked documents are correspondence, internal minutes, technical details of their products, logistical arrangements with external parties, expense reimbursement procedures, and personnel management documents, Xia said.

Xia said the leak would deal a “devastating” blow to company morale, creating distrust within the company.

“This leaked information about many internal personnel has been a deterrent to all involved,” Xia said. “The documents mentioned many names, including the specific software analysis and analysis reports of each individual. Numerous details have been disclosed.”

Xia said the leak could help developers of internet freedom tools better understand and circumvent the authoritarian technologies.

“For example, many overseas reports that simply refer to VPN tools [are] actually inaccurate. The vast majority of VPN tools lack the ability to circumvent the Great Firewall. VPNs themselves are simply protocols that are easily blocked. Many of these are listed,” he said.

“Another misconception overseas is that open source is crucial, with everyone collaborating to develop the most powerful solution to circumvent these blockades.”

He said that there are cases in which the Chinese company set about reverse engineering circumvention tools, and he said that the open-source nature of the tools makes it easier to analyze them.

“While many people are using open-source tools to develop circumvention tools, there haven’t been any successful cases. Those that have achieved widespread adoption have typically used closed-source code,” Xia said.

Xia said that Geedge’s client list shows clearly that only authoritarian governments in developing nations engage in this sort of mass censorship practice, because there is an economic trade-off.

“Only the CCP has the technical capabilities to manage internet companies while also developing its economy,” he said.

Li Jing and Yi Ru contributed to this report.