Geedge Networks, the organization behind China’s Great Firewall, has fallen victim to a massive data breach. The 500GB leak contained highly sensitive documents divulging technical implementation details of the censorship technology as well as its sale to authoritative countries like Myanmar, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Kazakhstan.

Also implicating the MESA Lab at the Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the data comes from key development platforms, such as Jira, Confluence, GitLab, and others. Not only does it reveal the actual source code behind parts of the Great Firewall, but also some of its internal documentation.

An anonymous source leaked the information to Enlace Hacktivista on 9 September 2025. The source states that a “global coalition of media and civil society organizations worked on the leak,” including Justice for Myanmar, Amnesty International USA, Wired, Reuters, and more. The full dump is publicly available for direct download, providing unprecedented insight into the internal workings of China’s secretive mass surveillance and censorship program.

Arguably, the most troubling aspect of the leak is China’s willingness to export this technology to other regimes. Buyers consist largely of the same countries involved in China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” — a global development strategy involving large Chinese economic and infrastructure investments. Resembling the historic Silk Road connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe, these new technological ties are being dubbed the “Digital Silk Road” by the media.

The Great Firewall of China is arguably the most sophisticated form of large-scale censorship and surveillance infrastructure in the world. The potent system enforces content filters that render most international media and social platforms inaccessible in China. Even otherwise effective circumvention tools, like VPNs, rarely work within the country.

However, it also consists of an interconnected web of facial recognition, biometric databases, AI-driven video surveillance, and deep packet inspection (DPI) tools. All of these work together to enforce the government’s strict control on the flow of information, tracking of dissidents, and social control via its “social credit” framework.

Now, the fear is that the expansion of these tools will allow for the further oppression of other countries’ citizens, who already live under limited freedoms. It’s particularly troubling against the backdrop of shrinking online privacy and freedom worldwide. Recent examples include Nepal’s short-lived ban on social media, which sparked deadly unrest, and the UK’s new mandatory age-verification laws.