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China has acquired a powerful new weapon in itsefforts to strictly controlinternet access and content.

Thats according to anew report released Apr. 10 by Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Torontos Munk School of Global Affairs. It sheds more light on the recent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacksagainst popular programming siteGitHub, and the nonprofit site GreatFire.org, which replicates websites already blocked by Chinese censors.

Citizen Lab says it had identified the new weaponwhich it has named Chinas Great Cannonresponsible for both attacks.

Located within Chinas massive Great Firewall censorship apparatus, the Great Cannon appears to operate asa separate tool thathijacks traffic to (or presumably from) individual IP addresses, and canarbitrarily replace unencrypted content as a man-in-the-middle,according to Citizen Lab.

In the case of online code repositoryGitHub, the Great Cannon was able to alter script distributed by Chinese search engine Baidu, redirecting massive amounts of bad trafficback towardsGitHubs servers in late March, reports the Verge. The attack, which lasted several days, was the largest the companyhad ever experienced.

While the Great Cannons ability to target and potentially take down websites is worrying enough, its also possible that the technologycould be tweaked in order to plant malware in millions of computers communicating with vulnerable Chinese servers, according to TechCrunch.

Those familiar with Edward Snowdens revelations may remember that the US already has this capability through the formerly top-secret NSA program QUANTUM.Unlike the US government, which attempted to keep the existence of QUANTUM a secret, China doesnot seem particularlyconcerned with hidingthis newest addition to it censorship arsenal. This brazenness both confuses and concerns the researchers at CitizenLab.

We remain puzzled as to why the GCs operator chose to first employ its capabilities in such a publicly visible fashion. Conducting such a widespread attack clearly demonstrates the weaponization of the Chinese Internet to co-opt arbitrary computers across the web and outside of China to achieve Chinas policy ends. The repurposing of the devices of unwitting users in foreign jurisdictions for covert attacks in the interests of one countrys national priorities is a dangerous precedentcontrary to international norms and in violation of widespread domestic laws prohibiting the unauthorized use of computing and networked systems.

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Chinas aggressive new censorship weapon can cripple your website