Read our latest paper on Russia's network changesPaper
Censored Planet is a censorship measurement platform that collects data using multiple remote measurement techniques in more than 200 countries.
Censored Planet, in collaboration with Google Jigsaw, has developed a public dashboard for exploring processed Censored Planet data.
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!
August 2024 USENIX Security
@inproceedings {Xue2024TLS, author = {Diwen Xue and Michalis Kallitsis and Amir Houmansadr and Roya Ensafi}, title = {{Fingerprinting Obfuscated Proxy Traffic with Encapsulated TLS Handshakes}}, booktitle = {33st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 24)}, year = {2024}, address = {Philadelphia, PA}, publisher = {USENIX Association}, }
August 2023 Usenix Security Symposium 2023
@inproceedings{ramesh2023network,
title = {{Network Responses to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine in 2022: A Cautionary Tale for Internet Freedom}},
author = {Ramesh, Reethika and Sundara Raman, Ram and Virkud, Apurva and Dirksen, Alexandra and Huremagic, Armin and Fifield, David and Rodenburg, Dirk and Hynes, Rod and Madory, Doug and Ensafi, Roya},
booktitle = {32nd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 23)}, year = {2023}, address = {Anaheim, CA}, publisher = {USENIX Association} }
July 2023 Free and Open Communications on the Internet
@inproceedings{Xue2023PUSH, author = {Diwen Xue and Roya Ensafi}, title = {{The Use of Push Notification in Censorship Circumvention}}, booktitle = {Free and Open Communications on the Internet}, year = {2023}, address = {Lausanne, Switzerland}, publisher = {Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies} }
July 2023 Privacy Enhancing Technology Symposium
@inproceedings{tsai2023detecting, title = {CERTainty: Detecting DNS Manipulation using TLS Certificates}, author = {Tsai, Elisa and Kumar, Deepak and Sundara Raman, Ram and Li, Gavin and Eiger, Yael and Ensafi, Roya}, booktitle={Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS)}, year={2023} }
February 2023 Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) 2023
@inproceedings{sundararaman2023advancing,
title = {Advancing the Art of Censorship Data Analysis},
author = {Sundara Raman, Ram and Virkud, Apurva and Laplante, Sarah and Fortuna, Vinicius and Ensafi, Roya},
booktitle={Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI)},
year={2023}
}
December 2022 Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT 2022)
@inproceedings {SundaraRaman2022Network,
author = {Ram Sundara Raman and Mona Wang and Jakub Dalek and Jonathan Mayer and Roya Ensafi},
title = {Network Measurement Methods for Locating and Examining Censorship Devices},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT '22)},
year = {2022},
address = {Rome, Italy},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
}
Censored Planet projects and research reports have appeared in various news outlets and tech publications.
