Facebook Login System Hijacked by China’s Great Firewall

On Sunday, many Chinese web users were shut out of popular websites that embed Facebook Connect, being repeatedly redirected to random webpages.
Facebook Login System Hijacked by China’s Great Firewall
Jonathan Zhou
Updated:

China’s Great Firewall has hijacked the JavaScript applet for Facebook Connect, redirecting its users to third-party websites.

Facebook Connect allows users to be authorized by other websites when logged into Facebook. On Sunday, some Chinese Web users loading webpages with Facebook Connect found that the native JavaScript had been replaced and redirects them to two unrelated websites—wpgk.org or ptraveler.com.

The problem has made it difficult for Chinese Web users to access numerous websites, and has led to a wave of complaints on social media platforms, including reddit.

The interception has sent a flood of traffic to both websites—ptraveler.com is down at the time of this report. 

This is not the first time the Great Firewall has deployed this type of mass-redirect campaign—dubbed “the Great Cannon” by security researchers. It’s typically used to overwhelm and disable sites the Chinese regime wants to censor.

In March, Github was hit with a massive denial-of-service attack. The attack targeted two pages: a mirror of Chinese translations of The New York Times, and the page for Greatfire, an anti-censorship project that aims to make unfiltered Google searches available in China.

Jonathan Zhou
Jonathan Zhou
Author
Jonathan Zhou is a tech reporter who has written about drones, artificial intelligence, and space exploration.
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