China Orders Patches to Planned Web Filter

BEIJING — A designer of Internet filtering software that is required to be preinstalled on computers sold in China has been ordered by the Chinese government to fix potential security breaches, according to a report Monday in China Daily, the official English-language newspaper. The official order is an indication that the government still supports use of the program despite heated debate over it.

The proposed software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, has come under attack from many computer users in China for both political and technical reasons. Critics say that although the Chinese government insists the software will be used only to block access to pornographic Web sites, the software’s actual use will be to block sites with political content, like those that discuss the Tibet issue or the crackdown during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

The government says all computers sold in China after July 1 must have the software installed. Some computer experts who have studied the software said last week that the software is so flawed that it can allow hackers to monitor a user’s Internet activity, steal data or plant viruses. One expert, J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, has posted on the Internet a report on its vulnerabilities.

Rather than agreeing to scrap the software altogether, the Chinese government has responded to the technical criticisms by ordering that the potential security breaches be eliminated.

“The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told us to make the software safer as soon as a series of security vulnerabilities were found,” Zhang Chenmin, the general manager of Jinhui Computer System Engineering, which helped design the software, told China Daily.

Mr. Zhang acknowledged that the software had systemic flaws that would allow hackers to attack computers that used the program, “just like any other software of this type.”

Mr. Halderman said last week that it had taken only a few hours for him and his students to infiltrate a computer loaded with Green Dam and force it to crash. A skilled hacker could take over the computer to mine personal data or hitch it to other infected machines in a malevolent network, he added.

Debate about the software exploded on the Internet last week as Chinese “netizens” learned more about the software requirement issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. China Daily reported Monday that surveys done by four of China’s most popular Web portals showed that four in five netizens would not use the software or would have it uninstalled.

Early reports had indicated that the government might simply require Green Dam to be included on a CD packaged with new computers. But it became apparent last week that the government was insisting that all computer makers pre-install the software by July 1.

Foreign computer makers learned of the requirement three weeks ago and have been asking the Chinese government to reconsider the rules.

Meanwhile, Solid Oak Software, a company based in Santa Barbara, California, has accused the designers of Green Dam of stealing programming code from a piece of software developed by Solid Oak that blocks Web sites deemed to be pornographic, violent or offensive. Solid Oak says that some of the “blacklist” files used by Green Dam had been originally developed for its program, which is called Cybersitter.

“I cannot deny that the two filters’ databases of blacklisted URL addresses might share similarities,” Mr. Zhang was quoted as saying in China Daily. “After all, they are all well-known international pornographic Web sites that all porn filters are meant to block. But we didn’t steal their programming code.”

By: EDWARD WONG

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Tetris Turns 25: Is it the next Olympic Sport

In 1984, Russian mathematician Alexey Pajitnov was playing with one of his favorite puzzles when he had an inspiration: How about creating a computer version?

Pajitnov wrote the program in his spare time, simplifying the idea to make it easier for those of us who aren't math geniuses.

He used shapes made of four squares -- hence "Tetris," which comes from the Greek word for four, "Tetra."

In the game, players must position and stack blocky shapes to fill a grid without leaving spaces in between. Successfully completed sections disappear. The more sections the player completes without reaching the top, the higher the score. The faster players accomplish this, the higher their score. iReport: 25 years of Tetris

Steadily, the game worked its way around the world. Millions of people found themselves glued to their computers and game players -- hearts racing and screaming in frustration -- all over getting a simple horizontal line of digital squares to disappear.

"I would just play it for hours and hours," said iReporter Joel Vetsch of New Haven, Connecticut, who got addicted to Tetris on a Game Boy when he was 10. "I'm 29 now, and I still love it." See Vetsch's iReport here

Vetsch became so obsessed with Tetris that the game even showed up in his dreams.
"I'd go to sleep and in my head I'd see blocks. . .going into each other," he told CNN. "It was weird."

More than 125 million Tetris products have been sold, and Guinness World Records' 2009 Gamers' Edition book ranked Tetris No. 2 on its list of the top 50 console games of all time, behind Super Mario Kart.

Twenty-five years to the month after Tetris was born, CNN spoke with Pajitnov and Henk Rogers, CEO of Blue Planet Software, the company that manages the exclusive licensing rights to the game.

The two men talked about what makes Tetris so addictive, how they believe the game can help unite the world, and -- no joke -- why they want a Tetris competition in the Olympics.

By : Josh Levs CNN

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