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The Censored Planet Observatory uses remote measurement techniques such as Augur, Satellite, Qauck and Hyperquack to run remote censorship measurements for thousands of websites. These techniques use features in existing Internet protocols and infrastructure to interact with remote systems, using their responses to determine the presence or absence of censorship. Thus, we eliminate the need for accessible vantage points or volunteers in different countries, surpassing scale, coverage, continuity, and safety limitations.
The observatory uses a modular design for measuring and analyzing Internet censorship. Censored Planet continously measures reachability to 2,000 websites from more than 95,000 vantage points in 221 countries (a 42-360% increase compared to other measurement platforms). Censored Planet also includes a rapid focus feature that can analyze certain censorship events in depth. Censored Planet finds increasing levels of censorship in 103 countries, and has detected more than 15 key censorship events.
The Censored Planet Observatory uses remote measurement techniques such as Augur, Satellite, Qauck and Hyperquack to run remote censorship measurements for thousands of websites. These techniques use features in existing Internet protocols and infrastructure to interact with remote systems, using their responses to determine the presence or absence of censorship. Thus, we eliminate the need for accessible vantage points or volunteers in different countries, surpassing scale, coverage, continuity, and safety limitations.
The observatory uses a modular design for measuring and analyzing Internet censorship. Censored Planet continously measures reachability to 2,000 websites from more than 95,000 vantage points in 221 countries (a 42-360% increase compared to other measurement platforms). Censored Planet also includes a rapid focus feature that can analyze certain censorship events in depth. Censored Planet finds increasing levels of censorship in 103 countries, and has detected more than 15 key censorship events.
All the data collected from the Observatory is publicly available
Our research publications are often technical and complex, here we aim to communicate our research to a broader audience.
We release novel network measurement methods for locating and examining censorship devices
Read ReportWe measured Russia's new TSPU censorship system, which empowers the Russian government to unilaterally roll out information control measures.
Read ReportWe identified OpenVPN's fingerprinting vulnerabilities and tested them with a real-world ISP
Read ReportAs of March 10, 2021, Russia has throttled access to several Twitter-related domains.
Read ReportOur research publications are often technical and complex, here we aim to communicate our research to a broader audience.
We release novel network measurement methods for locating and examining censorship devices
Read ReportWe measured Russia's new TSPU censorship system, which empowers the Russian government to unilaterally roll out information control measures.
Read ReportWe identified OpenVPN's fingerprinting vulnerabilities and tested them with a real-world ISP
Read ReportAs of March 10, 2021, Russia has throttled access to several Twitter-related domains.
Read ReportWe are always looking for promising students (computer science, political science, journalism) and developers to join our team!
We are always looking for promising students (CS, political science, journalism) and developers to join our team!
November 2021 ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
@inproceedings{xue2021throttling,
title = {Throttling Twitter: An Emerging Censorship Technique in Russia},
author = {Diwen Xue and Reethika Ramesh and ValdikSS and Leonid Evdokimov and Andrey Viktorov and Arham Jain and Eric Wustrow and Simone Basso and Roya Ensafi},
booktitle={In ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)},
year={2021}
}
March 2021 Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC) 2021
@inproceedings{vyas2021lost,
title = {Lost in Transmission: Investigating Filtering of COVID-19 Websites},
author = {Vyas, Anjali and Sundara Raman, Ram and Ceccio, Nick and Lutscher, Philipp and Ensafi, Roya},
booktitle={In Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC)},
year={2021}
}
November 2020 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2020
@inproceedings{sundararaman2020censoredplanet,
title = {Censored Planet: An Internet-Wide, Longitudinal Censorship Observatory},
author = {Sundara Raman, Ram and Shenoy, Prerana and Kohls, Katharina and Ensafi, Roya},
booktitle={In ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)},
year={2020}
}
October 2020 ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
@inproceedings{sundararaman2020investigating,
title={{Investigating Large Scale HTTPS Interception in Kazakhstan}},
author={R. Sundara Raman, L. Evdokimov, E. Wustrow, A. Halderman, and R. Ensafi},
booktitle={In ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)},
year={2020}
}
February 2020 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)
@inproceedings{sundararaman2020measuring,
title={Measuring the Deployment of Network Censorship Filters at Global Scale},
author={Sundara Raman, Ram and Stoll, Adrian and Dalek, Jakub and Ramesh, Reethika and Scott, Will and Ensafi, Roya},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2020, San Diego, California, USA},
year={2020}
}
Censored Planet projects and research reports have appeared in various news outlets and tech publications.