Developing a Science of Internet Censorship Resistance - Opportunities and Challenges

Explore the science of Internet censorship resistance through this 18-minute conference talk from USENIX Enigma 2018. Delve into the opportunities and challenges of network measurement in combating online information controls. Learn about ICLab, a platform for measuring Internet censorship, and examine case studies on filtering in Yemen and Iran. Discover how to pinpoint specific censorship products and understand the impact of sanctions on users' Internet experiences. Gain insights into new economic models of attacks, the market for censorship/surveillance products, and the importance of measurement in this critical field. Investigate techniques for fingerprinting censors, detecting injected packets, and verifying the use of specific filtering technologies.

Syllabus

Intro
New economic models of attacks
Huge market for censorship/surveillance products
What we are doing about it
Why measurement?
Censorship Measurement 101
What does this mean for ICLab? . Platiorm should support a wide range of network measurement operations
Overview of ICLab
Challenges of measuring
ICLab vantage points
ICLab use case 1: Yemen conflict
Filtering products...
Verifying Netsweeper use in Yemen
How to fingerprint the censor?
Detecting injected packets using IP TTL header
Verifying Netsweeper is returning the HTTP 404 page
ICLab use case 2: filtering in iran
How do tech sanctions influence censorship?