China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

i read that github contains content that the Chinese do not like and that is why this is happening - what is the content they are so pissed about ?

https://github.com/cn-nytimes/ and https://github.com/greatfire/ host information about and software for circumventing the Chinese government's internet censorship systems -- which, among many other things, blocks access to, eg, Google, and The New York Times.

Apparently they (the Chinese government) are not willing to entirely block Github traffic in the same way (presumably as an important tool for their software industry as well). This DDoS is an attempt to punish Github for not removing this block-circumventing information, and force the inaccessibility of those 2 repos specifically. It is being conducted in such a way that this is readily obvious but plausibly deniable.

At the same time I think the censors do not have the political power to block github all together.

"GitHub is the preferred tool for programmers to learn and connect with the rest of the world," he said in his Chinese-language post. He added that the site supported no political ideology, nor contained any reactionary content. "Blocking GitHub is unjustifiable, and will only derail the nation's programmers from the world, while bringing about a loss in competitiveness and insight."

Lee's post was re-tweeted over 80,000 times on Sina Weibo, and featured in news articles on Wednesday. In another post, he later compared the blocking to trying to catch a mouse by burning the entire house down.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2493478/internet/github...

"...should be the primary duty of our government."

Fixed it?

Although it's interesting to think about. Actual government retaliation would/could be seen as war provocation, especially if China holds on to any plausible deniability. Cyber warfare is currently very hard to prove, but even harder to hold accountable for. Even with DPRK, and our little shut-down-the-"internet" quiet retaliation thing that happened a few months back, North Korea still disavows responsibility. I imagine holding China actually responsible (in the way where it is recognized and acknowledged in the international community) is almost impossible... And thus we would be seen as the aggressors.

I still don't really get it. What's the actual goal behind the attack? When the Chinese government decides to block a website, I can at least understand their motivations, as bad as they may be. But DDOSing Github just seems to be pissing the whole world off for a few hours without any actual long term consequences.