JA3 Fingerprinting offers a good model for deep packet inspection by a government censorship apparatus. Fingerprints of the TLS Handshake When a client computer needs to establish a connection to a server, they need to “agree” on certain parameters like types of encryption used, identities, and session keys. Transport Layer Security (TLS) is used to encrypt the data transfer, and the TLS Handshake is how the two computers reach this agreement. Since the TLS handshake is not fully encrypted, it is possible to generate a fingerprint of this handshake. This information can be used for several legitimate reasons: ...

The mechanisms and human cost of Iran’s censorship regime. The Israel-Iran Conflict Highlights Lack of Freedom in Iran I’ve been wanting to write a post about online censorship in Iran for a while. With the week-old onset of a major conflict between Iran and Israel, this seemed like a good time to do it. Iran has a very sophisticated censorship system. The entire system, including an advanced technical infrastructure, the Iranian legal system, and aggressive repression of any dissident voices, makes the Iranian censorship apparatus second only to China in its scope (for more information about China’s Great Firewall, see the post Golden Shield: The Inner Workings of China’s Great Firewall). ...

Internet shutdowns may be purposeful or due to poor infrastructure, but their occurrence and impacts can be measured. Internet Shutdowns: Exams, Protests, and Infrastructure Failures On two days this week, May 20th and May 22nd, monitors of internet connectivity showed widespread internet outages in Iraq. This occurred on both days from 03:00 and and 05:00 UTC (6:00 AM to 8:00 AM) and coincided with national school exams in the country. The move, ordered by the Iraqi government, is designed to prevent cheating during the exams. Since 2022, internet shutdowns during exams have occurred over 100 times. Digital rights groups such as Access Now have petitioned Prime Minister Iraq’s Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani to keep the internet on. They contend that the shutdowns do not control cheating and have not prevented the sharing of exam answers. ...

China Implements the Golden Shield The Chinese government has recognized since 1998 that the internet had the power to expose their population to a world of information. They also knew that much of this information had the potential to challenge the official narrative of the communist party. Determined to get ahead of what they saw as an existential threat, the government began work on a massive censorship apparatus. This project was named the Golden Shield by its builders, but is known to the outside world as the “Great Firewall of China.” The first phase of the Golden Shield project wasn’t completed until 2006, but it has continued to expand and is now arguably the most advanced system of its kind in the world. ...

Censorship Is Not Just For Authoritarians Recently I have written about online censorship that takes place in very authoritarian countries such as Russia and China. Anybody with even a passing knowledge of current events would not be surprised that these governments, as well as other oppressive regimes like Turkey, Iran, and Myanmar, censor what their citizens see online. In Freedom House’s publication Freedom On The Net, China, Russia, Iran, and Myanmar rank at the very bottom of the rankings (China gets a 9 out of 100). ...

Virtual Private Networks Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are one of the most important tools in the fight against online censorship. A VPN can allow an internet user to surf the web with reasonable anonymity, access websites that may be blocked in their country, and sometimes even bypass advances censorship technologies. Because of these and other abilities, citizens of authoritarian regimes can get news, entertainment, and other information otherwise unavailable to them. A VPN, though, is not a panacea, and even the best VPNs have limitations. ...