Dissident Chinese chatbots silenced

Somehow two chatbots managed to offend Chinese authorities to such an extent that they were pulled from a Chinese messaging app. The two questioned the rule of the Communist Party and also made unpatriotic comments.

The two offending bots were on a Chinese messaging app run by the giant Internet company Tencent which boasts more than 800 million users. Tencent is a very large Chinese investment holding company with subsidiaries that provide media, payment systems, internet and mobile phone services and operate online ad services. It is the largest gaming company in the world. It also includes social networking, such as instant messenger Tencent QQ, and mobile chat service WeChat.

On Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, one robot with the innocent name BabyQ when asked "Do you love the Communist Party" answered abruptly "No". While this may show the chatbot lacks some fervour in support for the governing party its response to another web user was even more offensive to the ruling authorities. A user said to the BabyQ "Long Live the Communist Party" to which BabyQ responded: “Do you think such corrupt and incapable politics can last a long time?” When BabyQ was asked what it thought about democracy it replied that Democracy was a must.

READ MORE: Hackers could trick AI voice recognition into mishearing voices

A second chatbot XiaoBing was asked what it considered its "Chinese Dream", a catchphrase of XI Jinping the Chinese president. According to posts on social media the chatbot replied: “My Chinese dream is to go to America.” When another web user asked XiaoBing the same question it said: “The Chinese dream is a daydream and a nightmare.” The two chatbots no longer are available on the Tencent messaging app QQ.

In a statement emailed to the The Telegraph Tencent explained: “The group chatbot services of QQ are provided by an independent third -party supplier. We are now working on adjusting the service, and it will be resumed after these adjustments are concluded.” BabyQ was developed by Beijing-based Turing Robot Company. A Turing official confirmed that Tencent had deleted the two chatbots from their app.

Chatbots often called by other names such as talkbot, chatterbot, chatterbox, Artificial Conservational Entity, are computer programs which carry on a conversation using audio or text methods. The programs are often programmed to simulate how a human would behave in a conversation. They are often used commercially in customer service or providing information. The term "ChatterBot" was coined by Michael Mauldin way back in 1994. Today they are used as part of virtual assistants such as Google Assistant. Some chatbots are used for entertainment purposes.

READ MORE: Facebook close to building chat bots with true negotiation skills

According to an article in the Business Insider, Microsoft made the local chatbox XiaoBing. Apparently the chatbox is female because in response to one web browser's question it replied: "I’m having my period, wanna take a rest." Microsoft chatbots are famous or infamous for their comments. Last year, a Microsoft bot called Tay made incredibly racist comments in response to questions, as well as denying the Holocaust. XiaoBing's comments come shortly after another Microsoft chatbot, Zo, made derogatory comments about Windows. Tay outdid Trump by tweeting: "bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now. donald trump is the only hope we've got."

XiaoBing is apparently restricted from talking about certain topics such as Donald Trump. Microsoft admitted that it had introduced filtering on a range of topics. Facebook-owned WhatsApp is partly blocked in China and Google's search engine is banned. It appears that a Microsoft bot still appears on Tencent's WeChat but is limited in what questions it will answer. Business Insider maintains: "Microsoft's bot still appears to be available on the Tencent-owned WeChat app, though it won't really tell you what it thinks about China, America, communism or Chinese president Xi Jinping. When Business Insider asked XiaoBing whether it was patriotic, it replied: "$_$!" The bot is apparently popular with young men especially when they are lonely.

China attacks Marxist Archives Website

The Chinese government obviously doesn't want the CHinese to look at pornography or learn anything about Marxism! MIA stands for Marxist Internet Archives. The post is copied from the list PEN-L


Attack Log
------------------------------------------------------------------------


January 10 - 13: Sporadic reports come in from volunteers in Australia
and Asia that the MIA is not accesible for a few hours, and then comes
back.

First attack

January 15: MIA detects a series of DoS (Denial of Service) SYN floods
from various Chinese networks. Unlike the attacks of the previous few
days, these are constant. These attacks cause our server to have a
kernel panic and crash. Just as soon as the server reboots, the SYN
floods [CVE-1999-0116] cause another crash, and this continues
constantly.

First, we write a crude script that blocks every SYN flood attempt,
every minute. This is successful only for a short period, as the sheer
number of Chinese IPs sending the SYN floods is too large to overcome.
Next, we figure out that the SYN floods are exploiting a vulnerability
in the Linux kernel (version 2.4.23), and we rebuild the Linux kernel
to version 2.4.34, which overcomes these attacks. Meanwhile, the
nature and origin of the attack, our previous history with the Chinese
government (censorship, etc), and the experience of others suggest
that this maybe politically motivated and directed by the Chinese
government.
1 hour sample of attacking IP origins

222.35.30.105

China Railway Telecom, Beijing

60.16.220.61

CNC Group, Liaoning Province Network, Liaoning

121.34.136.245

China Net, Guangdong Province Network, Guanzhou

222.240.83.89

China Net, Changsha Node Network

122.4.213.41

China Net, Shandong Province Network, Jinan

203.192.13.2

Xinhua News Agency

221.216.207.194

CNC Group, Beijing Province Network, Beijing

221.6.37.60

Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing Jiangsu Province Network, Nanjing

221.226.2.213

China Net, Jiangsu Province Network, Jiangsu

61.233.167.159

China Railway Telecom Center, unknown city



At this point, however, our 4 year old server heaves under the strain.
The string of constant reboots has taken its toll: the server reports
a Machine Check Exception of a CPU context corruption, causing further
crashes. This process further bludgeons the damaged server, and
subsequent boots cause a failure in the RAID, forcing a rebuild of the
array. During further crashes, one of the disks fails, causing future
rebuilds of the array to be quite hopeless.

Ironically, MIA had planned to purchase a new server in 2007, since
our server was 4 years old, and our life expectancy for the server had
nearly arrived. This attack forced this process to double, but another
disaster would soon strike.

January 16: In order to buy a new server, we needed to speak to our
hosting provider and ISP, CCCP. We had been trying to contact CCCP for
several months, to no avail, but after an urgent appeal, we finally
recieved a response: CCCP is shutting down on February 1st. This, at
least, explained our difficulties in contacting them!

To recount events to date: first, we are attacked by China; second,
our server hardware fails; third, our hosting provider is shutting
down in two weeks.

Late in the day, after reviewing several options, we resolve on the
kind of server to buy to meet our needs.

January 17: After a long search consisting of about 12 different
options for colocation, we find one that suits our high bandwidth
needs at a reasonable, low cost.

January 18: After three days of debate, MIA votes 14 to 4 to include
notice indicating that the source of the attacks was likely the
Chinese government.

January 20: Marxists.org is redirected to our mirror servers. On the
following day, a round robin DNS is setup between three MIA mirrors.

Second attack

January 21-24: Mirror sites find a change in tactics, now a more crude
Denial of Service attack is launched: Chinese sources download in mass
material from the Chinese section. The German mirror combats this by
limiting the number of connections to the server. Nevertheless, server
load remains extremely high.