CAREER: Combating Censorship from within the Network

世界上超过一半的网民生活在审查网上政治、社会或宗教内容的国家，威权政府继续设计和部署越来越复杂的审查制度。因此，互联网审查是一个重大且日益严重的威胁，使得对规避技术的研究成为一个重要的优先事项。虽然在过去，代理和(虚拟专用网络)VPN可以用来规避审查，但今天，审查人员使用复杂的技术来查找和阻止现有的规避资源。这个项目提出了一种新的方法来研究和打击世界各地的互联网审查，采用类似于审查者本身的视角，并利用非审查国家的互联网基础设施。首先，这个基础设施将被用来测量“正常”的互联网流量，这样规避代理就可以知道要模仿什么，以便伪装它们的活动并躲避检测。其次，该项目将利用这些发现和网络基础设施本身来创建更难被审查人员屏蔽的新型代理。从网络的角度研究和打击审查制度将有助于在审查者和规避工具开发者之间创造公平的竞争环境，最终支持全球互联网用户的自主权和获取信息的途径，包括生活在受到严格审查的地区的全球数十亿人。这项工作将使用部署在非审查国家的(互联网服务提供商)互联网服务提供商和互联网交换点(IXP)的网络窃听来衡量流行的互联网协议及其在实践中的使用情况，开发新的方法来检测新的和新兴的审查形式，并探索如何使用互联网服务提供商的数据来改进现有的代理和规避策略。在日益增长的折射网络部署的基础上，这项工作还调查了可以使用ISP视角直接对抗审查的新方法，例如改进折射传输以更好地抵御来自审查者的主动探测攻击，实施审查者更难发现和阻止的对等代理协议，以及找到在实践中直接使政府审查成本更高的方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Over half of the world’s Internet population live in countries that censor political, social, or religious content online, and authoritarian governments continue to design and deploy increasingly sophisticated censorship systems. Internet censorship is thus a significant and growing threat, making research into circumvention technologies an important priority. While in the past proxies and (Virtual Private Networks) VPNs could be used to circumvent censorship, today, censors use complex techniques to find and block existing circumvention resources. This project proposes new ways to study and combat Internet censorship around the world by adopting a perspective similar to the censor’s themselves, and leveraging Internet infrastructure in non-censoring countries. First, this infrastructure will be used to measure “normal” Internet traffic, so that circumvention proxies can learn what to mimic in order to camouflage their activity and evade detection. Second, this project will use those findings and the network infrastructure itself to create new kinds of proxies that are harder for censors to block. Studying and combatting censorship from the network perspective will help level the playing field between censors and circumvention tool developers, ultimately supporting Internet users’ autonomy and access to information globally, including the billions of people worldwide living in repressively censored regions.This work will use network taps deployed at (Internet Service Providers) ISPs and Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) in non-censoring countries to measure popular Internet protocols and how they are used in practice, develop novel ways to detect new and emerging forms of censorship, and explore how existing proxies and circumvention strategies can be improved using ISP data. Building on the growing Refraction Networking deployment, this work also investigates new ways that the ISP perspective can be used to combat censorship directly, such as improvements in Refraction transports to better resist active probing attacks from censors, implementing peer-to-peer proxy protocols that are harder for censors to detect and block, and finding ways to directly make censorship more expensive for governments in practice.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.