Zeyi Yang
A leak of more than 100,000 documents shows that a little-known Chinese company has been quietly selling censorship systems seemingly modeled on the Great Firewall to governments around the world.
Geedge Networks, a company founded in 2018 that counts the “father” of China’s massive censorship infrastructure as one of its investors, styles itself as a network-monitoring provider, offering business-grade cybersecurity tools to “gain comprehensive visibility and minimize security risks” for its customers, the documents show. In fact, researchers found that it has been operating a sophisticated system that allows users to monitor online information, block certain websites and VPN tools, and spy on specific individuals.
Researchers who reviewed the leaked material found that the company is able to package advanced surveillance capabilities into what amounts to a commercialized version of the Great Firewall—a wholesale solution with both hardware that can be installed in any telecom data center and software operated by local government officers. The documents also discuss desired functions that the company is working on, such as cyberattack-for-hire and geofencing certain users.
According to the leaked documents, Geedge has already entered operation in Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar, as well as another unidentified country. A public job posting shows that Geedge is also looking for engineers who can travel to other countries for engineering work, including to several countries not named in the leaked documents, WIRED has found.
The files, including Jira and Confluence entries, source code, and correspondence with a Chinese academic institution, mostly involve internal technical documentation, operation logs, and communications to solve issues and add functionalities. Provided through an anonymous leak, the files were studied by a consortium of human rights and media organizations including Amnesty International, InterSecLab, Justice For Myanmar, Paper Trail Media, The Globe and Mail, the Tor Project, the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, and Follow The Money.
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