"China has long used the Internet's Domain Name Service to censor Web
sites and information that the ruling Communist Party deems
threatening. But now security experts warn that the government's
censorship is in danger of spilling over China's borders, suppressing the ability of those living outside of China to find information online. An estimated 57% of all networks on Earth passed DNS requests through a Chinese DNS rootserver
at some point in 2010, according to data from security firm Renesys.
Tampering by the Communist Party there poses a danger to Internet
security and freedom. In fact, DNS tampering may be a bigger threat than
techniques like BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) hijacking, which is
believed to be responsible for an unexpected shift in Internet routing
in April that has recently been the subject of mainstream media reports
in the US. There is already evidence that China's efforts to tamper
with DNS have bled outside the country's borders. The same report to
Congress from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission that
called attention to the BGP hijacking incident from April, 2010 also
mentions a March, 2010 incident in which Internet users in the US and
Chile attempted to connect to social networking websites banned by the
Chinese government. However, their DNS requests were handled by a
Beijing-based Domain Name Server, which responded with incorrect DNS
information that directed the surfers to incorrect servers, the report
says."
