Abstract:
Many techniques have been introduced to measure network interference-tampering performed by nation-state censors or corporate firewalls to block unwanted traffic. However, virtually all prior measurement techniques require some degree of participation from endpoints within each country of study: including VPNs, cloud providers, or volunteers willing to run measurement software on their personal devices at their own risk. However, such endpoints are not always available in all countries that tamper with connections, leaving many networks unmeasurable.
Abstract:
The proliferation of global censorship has led to the development of a plethora of measurement platforms to monitor and expose it. Censorship of the domain name system (DNS) is a key mechanism used across different countries. It is currently detected by applying heuristics to samples of DNS queries and responses (probes) for specific destinations. These heuristics, however, are both platform-specific and have been found to be brittle when censors change their blocking behavior, necessitating a more reliable automated process for detecting censorship.
Researchers have studied Internet censorship for nearly as long as attempts to censor contents have taken place. Most studies have however been limited to a short period of time and/or a few countries; the few exceptions have traded off detail for …
The prevalence of Internet censorship has prompted the creation of several measurement platforms for monitoring filtering activities. An important challenge faced by these platforms revolves around the trade-off between depth of measurement and …