It was recently reported China has gained a new cyberweapon operating in tandem with the Great Firewall used to block content deemed inappropriate by the communist government in Beijing.

The new weapon is called the Great Cannon and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has reason to believe Edward Snowden gave it to them.

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For years, China has used the Great Firewall. As its name suggests, it's a massive nationwide firewall that blocks and filters websites the government deems improper. Beijing have been implementing strict internet censorship through this.

Reports recently indicated China now has an offensive cyberweapon called the Great Cannon that goes after sites it does not like.

With this new weapon, China has the capacity to re-route traffic coming to China's websites and use them for malicious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to overload servers of the websites in question.

Experts from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab state it can hijack traffic to or from individual IP addresses, "and can arbitrarily replace unencrypted content as a man-in-the-middle."

Instances where governments are known to tamper with Internet traffic to launch attacks use a program called QUANTUM. It was developed by the US National Security Agent (NSA) and the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Snowden revealed this information when he provided some slides to American journalists in May 2013. The WSJ questions whether or not Snowden provided China with the codes for the Great Cannon.

While Snowden has openly denied sharing any intel with foreign governments, the WSJ states he's an admitted liar.

At best, the evidence of WSJ is circumstantial. It's based on suspicions of Snowden, the similar traits of the Great Cannon and Quantum and it's timely surfacing.

WSJ said the South China Morning Post previously reported the Great Cannon has been under development for about a year.

The timing is indeed suggestive of Snowden's own activities and according to the WSJ, "This means China's hacking bureaucracy geared up to produce this new product soon after the Snowden leaks."

Despite all the suspicion, the fact of the matter is China has the Great Cannon and will use it to enforce their internet censorship ideals.

TagsGreat Cannon, Wall Street Journal, Edward Snowden