Opinion     

China's cyber security needs internationalism

China.org.cn, February 8, 2014

• A widespread DNS outage hit China between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. on January 21, leaving millions of domestic and international online domains completely inaccessible. The reason behind the incident was a hack attack on the root servers, something that is believed to pose an even further-reaching threat in the future. When considering countermeasures to enhance national cyber security, it is essential to understand and adhere to internationalism in cyberspace. One world, one Internet.

  A widespread DNS outage hit China between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. on January 21, leaving millions of domestic and international online domains completely inaccessible.

  
  
  

  In terms of technical architecture, there are only 13 root servers worldwide ranked from A to M. Ten such servers are located within the United States, including the taproot one; two are in Europe (Stockholm (I) and Amsterdam (K)); and one is in Tokyo (M). However, one disputable fact remains that China, which has the world's largest online population, does not even own one.

  Just like the unbalanced geographical configuration of root servers, an Internet Protocol address (IP address) is also proven to be unequal and asymmetric in regards to resource allocation and management rights. According to the 33rd China Internet Development Statistics Report published by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the Chinese Internet population reached 591 million by late 2013, with the Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) of 331 million (the second highest number worldwide).

  The United States, on the other hand, owns more than 2.3 billion IPv4, accounting for more than half of the global number (about 4.3 billion). Although the gap is being narrowed with the development of IPv6, different countries still barely enjoy equal speaking rights on Internet use under the current layout of root servers.

  Over the past decade, China has taken various measures in its fight for equal rights. On the one hand, in 2003, 2005 and 2006, China purchased a range of mirror service of the root servers F, I and J. On the flipside then, China launched its national domain name project in 2007, aiming to encourage the application for and registration of the ".CN" domain name instead of ".COM."

  As a result, once China loses all connection with the root servers due to the hack attacks, carried out either by individuals or the U.S. government, the world's cyberspace will return to a so-called Warring States Period. The global network will then diffuse into different geographic parts, consisting of the U.S. Internet, the U.K. Internet, the Japan Internet and the China Internet.

Copyright © China.org.cn. All Rights Reserved