On August 21, from 00:34 to 01:48 local time, China temporarily severed connections on TCP port 443, rendering most foreign websites inaccessible to its citizens.
This unusual disruption, lasting over an hour, was documented by activists from the Great Firewall Report, a group monitoring China’s internet censorship practices.
The incident blocked HTTPS traffic, a critical protocol for secure web browsing, affecting not only public access but also services like those used by Apple and Tesla that rely on offshore servers. Despite the significant impact, Chinese authorities have not disclosed the reasons behind the outage. No major events necessitating heightened censorship were reported during this period, leaving the motive shrouded in speculation.
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The Great Firewall Report suggests that this could have been an intentional test of China’s ability to fully isolate itself from the global internet. The blocking mechanism, which injected forged TCP RST+ACK packets, did not match the fingerprints of known Great Firewall devices, hinting at either a new system or a misconfigured setup.
Whether this was a planned experiment to assess isolation capabilities or an unintended glitch remains unclear, but it underscores the potential for China to exert unprecedented control over its digital borders.
