article_snippet.sent: It blasts targeted Web servers with massive distributed denial of service attacks, and the "Great Cannon uses the Web browsers of unsuspecting Web surfers to do the "Great Cannon.
article_snippet.sent: the "Great Cannon wrecked two online services with DDoS attacks in March, say the researchers from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, the International Computer Science Institute, the University of California-Berkeley and Princeton University.
article_snippet.sent: A modest technical change could turn the "Great Cannon into a malware delivery device for infecting the computer of a target individual anywhere in the world who visits a Chinese server," Scott-Railton said.
article_snippet.sent: "a malware delivery device for infecting the computer of a target individual anywhere in the world who visits a Chinese server could replace genuine attachments with malicious files, for example.
article_snippet.sent: Instead, The Great Cannon targets traffic between a handful of Web addresses.
article_snippet.sent: But The Great Cannon uses Web traffic unrelated to The Great Cannon targets to build The Great Cannon attack against its targets.
article_snippet.sent: But in a tiny fraction of the cases the researchers observed, The Great Cannon picked out computers The Great Cannon wanted to use in the attack, and sent bad code back to the user's browser.
article_snippet.sent: The malicious script enlisted the requesting user as an unwitting participant in the DDoS attack against GreatFire.org and Github," the authors wrote.
article_snippet.sent: Fully encrypting Web traffic should help to defend against the Great Cannon, Scott-Railton said.
article_snippet.sent: Deployment of the GC (Great Cannon) may also reflect a desire to counter what the U.S. government perceives as U.S. hegemony in cyberspace," the researchers write.
article_snippet.sent: The authors say the United States and Great Britain already have methods for intercepting unencrypted traffic and launching attacks.