Is NTHU’s Telegram Blocked?
The controversial forum “Creative Secret Room” contained a large number of illicitly-taken images of underage individuals, which were traded among members. This has attracted public attention. After the incident broke out, the Digital Ministry quickly “shut down” the forum and requested internet service providers to stop resolving the “Creative Secret Room” domain to prevent the public from accessing illegal websites.
However, the forum operator seems to have shifted to Telegram groups. Therefore, the Ministry of Health and Welfare had previously stated at the beginning of the month that Telegram could be completely blocked in Taiwan under two conditions.
Further Reading:
Has Creative Secret Room moved to Telegram? Ministry of Health and Welfare: Taiwan may be completely banned under “these two conditions”
Since Telegram is a communication software highly relied upon by the cryptocurrency community, the release of this news has also caused many users to feel anxious and believe that the response may have been excessive.
On May 17th, a student from National Tsing Hua University posted a discussion article on Taiwan’s community platform, Dcard, titled “Telegram Blocked???”. The student mentioned that when they tried to open Telegram on the campus, they received a warning message stating “The connected domain has stopped resolving due to involvement in a criminal case.” The article also included a Domain Name System (DNS) screenshot, which seemed to indicate that the domain was blocked through “Domain Name System Response Policy Zone” (DNS RPZ).
The Domain Name System Response Policy Zone (DNS RPZ) is integrated by the Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC), a non-profit organization, along with domestic internet infrastructure providers, to restrict access to inappropriate or malicious domain names or IP addresses within and outside the country.
The reason Telegram was blocked at NTHU this time is mainly because the Hsinchu City Government directly sent letters to various schools and communication service providers bypassing TWNIC for handling. After receiving the letter from the Hsinchu City Government, the NTHU Computer and Communication Center blocked Telegram without notifying TWNIC for the review result.
Therefore, only students using the NTHU campus network experienced Telegram being blocked.
According to the normal process published by TWNIC, after the applicant submits an application, it should be reviewed by TWNIC before sending the request to RPZ members. However, in recent years, more and more county and city governments have directly sent letters to various school network units and network centers. Public servants in charge of executing these tasks also face the dilemma of “if the connection fails, they will be criticized by users, but if they can connect, they will be scolded by superiors or face legal consequences.” Therefore, they directly stop resolving without formally receiving TWNIC’s review notification.
Why did NTHU stop resolving Telegram?
Taiwanese cybersecurity engineer Yu Li-heng also shared this incident on his personal Facebook page, stating, “The receiving unit (NTHU Computer and Communication Center) did not judge whether the related requirements were reasonable or simply executed them, resulting in the situation where the NTHU network cannot access Telegram.”
Yu Li-heng explained that the advantage of TWNIC RPZ is that it can filter whether the requirements of law enforcement agencies are reasonable before stopping resolution. Therefore, TWNIC should have responded to the original unit, revoked the unreasonable request, and informed various internet service providers to make corrections.
In the comments below the PTT discussion board, a netizen also posted a leaked document from the Hsinchu City Government, stating that overseas online platforms “oursogo, japaninporm, and Telegram” published underage sexual images without restricting access or removing them, violating Article 8 of the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act. Therefore, multiple units in Taiwan were requested to stop resolving the above three domains, including various universities, the Ministry of Education, the Digital Ministry, as well as FarEasTone and Chunghwa Telecom, and other major telecom service providers.
Some netizens shared that the list of designated units mainly consists of units that have their own DNS and have previously applied to join the TWNIC RPZ for regional defense.
DNS RPZ has mandatory constraints on preventing domestic users from accessing inappropriate or malicious domain names, but this mandatory measure must be established on a legal and legitimate procedure.
According to TWNIC’s official statement, there are currently two situations stipulated in the TWNIC DNS RPZ policy model:
1. Based on court judgments/rulings or administrative orders
2. Domain names with significant cybersecurity concerns
The removal nature is mainly based on legal requirements and the recognition that critical infrastructure has an obligation to maintain cybersecurity.
This incident has sparked a lot of discussion among netizens, and some believe that the approach of blocking the network seems excessive and “loophole-prone.” Many netizens commented, “Line and Facebook scams will never disappear,” and “NTHU blocked it themselves, so they shouldn’t be using the DNS RPZ page.” Yu Li-heng also added a comment on May 19th, stating that TWNIC has notified these network access units not to stop resolving arbitrarily.