CAREER: Combating Censorship from within the Network

世界上超过一半的互联网人口生活在审查网上政治、社会或宗教内容的国家，专制政府继续设计和部署日益复杂的审查系统。因此，互联网审查是一个重大且日益增长的威胁，使研究规避技术成为一个重要的优先事项。而在过去的代理和（虚拟专用网）vpn可以用来规避审查，今天，审查员使用复杂的技术来查找和阻止现有的规避资源。本项目提出了研究和对抗全球互联网审查的新方法，采用与审查者自身相似的视角，并利用非审查国家的互联网基础设施。首先，该基础设施将用于测量“正常”互联网流量，以便规避代理可以学习模仿什么以伪装其活动并逃避检测。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以被审查者屏蔽的新型代理。从网络的角度研究和反对审查将有助于在审查者和规避工具开发商之间建立公平的竞争环境，最终支持全球互联网用户的自主权和获取信息的权利，包括全球数十亿生活在受审查地区的人。这项工作将使用部署在非审查国家的（互联网服务提供商）ISP和互联网交换点（ixp）的网络监听器来衡量流行的互联网协议及其在实践中的使用情况，开发新方法来检测新的和正在出现的审查形式，并探索如何利用ISP数据改进现有的代理和规避策略。在不断增长的折射网络部署的基础上，这项工作还研究了ISP视角可用于直接对抗审查的新方法，例如改进折射传输以更好地抵抗来自审查者的主动探测攻击，实现对审查者更难检测和阻止的点对点代理协议，以及找到直接使审查在实践中对政府更昂贵的方法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.