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[Blog post] iThena integration of OONI Probe boosts censorship measurement coverage
by Maria Xynou 20 Dec '21

20 Dec '21

Hello, We just published a blog post titled "*iThena integration of OONI Probe boosts censorship measurement coverage worldwide*": https://ooni.org/post/2021-ithena-boosts-ooni-measurement-coverage/ In this blog post, we’re excited to introduce you to the iThena project and discuss how they helped support censorship measurement worldwide. Thanks to iThena's integration of OONI Probe, OONI measurement coverage has increased significantly! Over the last months, iThena has contributed OONI measurements from 38 countries, covering 172 AS networks. Thank you, iThena! <3 Cheers, Maria.

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[Report] Russia started blocking Tor
by Maria Xynou 20 Dec '21

20 Dec '21

Hello, We published a report documenting the *blocking of Tor in Russia*. Read the report here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-russia-blocks-tor/ Our report shares OONI data and analysis on the blocking of the Tor network and Tor Project website on some AS networks in Russia. *# Blocking of Tor* On 1st December 2021, some ISPs in Russia started blocking access to the Tor network by means of IP blocking. Out of (more than) 65 tested AS networks, OONI data only shows signs of Tor blocking on 15 AS networks in Russia. Russia also blocks obfs4 addresses, which means that Tor users in Russia may need to use private Tor bridges to circumvent the block: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-cens… Tor blocking differs from ISP to ISP in Russia. However, not all users on the same AS network experience Tor blocking. *# Blocking of torproject.org <http://torproject.org>* OONI data suggests that some ISPs in Russia have been blocking access to torproject.org since September 2021. Censorship techniques across ISPs differ. On some networks, a block page is served for torproject.org, enabling us to automatically confirm the block. On other networks, OONI data suggests that access to torproject.org is being interfered with by means of a TLS man-in-the-middle attack. In other cases, we observe that the connection is reset once the TLS handshake has been initiated, suggesting the use of DPI. Despite these blocks, OONI data suggests that both the Tor network & torproject.org are still accessible on most networks in Russia. *# What you can do * To help more Russians stay connected to the Tor network, please run a Tor bridge: https://forum.torproject.net/t/help-censored-users-run-a-tor-bridge/704 To circumvent Tor blocking in Russia, you can use a private Tor bridge: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-cens… We also recommend keeping an eye out for (and updating to) the next Tor Browser version, and configuring Tor Browser to use Snowflake. If access to torproject.org is blocked on your network, you can: * Circumvent this block by visiting the Tor Project’s website mirror: https://tor.eff.org * Get Tor Browser by sending an email to gettor(a)torproject.org We thank OONI Probe users in Russia who contributed measurements, supporting this study. <3 We also thank the Tor Project for their tireless efforts in building an online world that defends human rights. <3 Best, OONI team.

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Update to OONI Probe Mobile 3.5.0
by Maria Xynou 20 Dec '21

20 Dec '21

Hi friends, OONI Probe Mobile 3.5.0 is released! :) Please update your OONI Probe: https://ooni.org/install/mobile With the latest version, you can enable "automated testing" (in the settings) to *run the following tests automatically*: * Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger app tests * Tor, Psiphon, RiseupVPN app tests * Websites test Please ensure your VPN is turned off when running OONI Probe (automated tests will not work if your VPN is turned on). Your test results from automated runs will automatically be published on OONI Explorer: https://explorer.ooni.org/search Thanks for contributing measurements! Cheers, Maria.

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PT community meetup December [02/12/2021]
by Vasilis 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

Dear all, This Thursday on 02/12/2021 December's PT community meetup will take place. Time: 9am EST / 1:00 PM UTC Where: IFF Square on IFF Mattermost More info and details on how to join: https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/December_2_2021_GM Hope to see many of you there. Best, ~Vasilis -- PGP Fingerprint: 8FD5 CF5F 39FC 03EB B382 7470 5FBF 70B1 D126 0162 PGP Public Key: https://keys.openpgp.org/vks/v1/by-fingerprint/8FD5CF5F39FC03EBB38274705FBF…

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OONI Community Meeting: Tuesday, 30th November 2021
by Maria Xynou 25 Nov '21

25 Nov '21

Hello, The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us next Tuesday for our monthly community meeting. *=> Where? *OONI Slack channel: https://slack.ooni.org/ (bridged with IRC: ircs://irc.oftc.net:6697/#ooni) *=> When?* Tuesday, *30th November 2021 at 14:00 UTC* (for 1 hour) Please add topics that you'd like to discuss during the meeting in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting-keep The monthly OONI community meetings aim to: * Collect community feedback on OONI tools & methodologies * Address questions in relation to the use of OONI tools and OONI data * Foster discussions on internet censorship issues * Receive updates from the community We hope you can join us! All the best, ~ OONI team

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Research paper on Internet censorship in Myanmar
by Maria Xynou 11 Nov '21

11 Nov '21

Hello, A few months ago, the OONI team collaborated with researchers at *IODA, Kentik, UC San Diego, and University of Michigan / Censored Planet* on a research paper examining censorship events in Myanmar (through diverse measurement datasets) following the military coup. The paper, titled "*A multi-perspective view of Internet censorship in Myanmar*", was published by FOCI 2021 here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3473604.3474562 Today, we published a blog post which *summarizes the research paper findings*, and which links to IODA's amazing YouTube video (discussing the findings): https://ooni.org/post/2021-multiperspective-view-internet-censorship-myanma… Best, Maria.

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New Report: Investigating Internet Shutdowns through Mozilla Telemetry
by Maria Xynou 09 Nov '21

09 Nov '21

Hello, In collaboration with IODA, we published a *new research report* which analyzes *Mozilla telemetry* to investigate *internet shutdowns in Myanmar, Uganda, Belarus, and Iran *over the last year. Read our research report here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-investigating-internet-shutdowns-mozilla-telemet… The folks from Mozilla also published a blog post about our report here: https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2021/11/08/detecting-internet-outages-with-mo… Below we share information about the research and some key findings. *# About the research* Given how widespread Firefox usage is worldwide, could Mozilla telemetry be a valuable resource for the Internet freedom community to investigate Internet shutdowns? To explore this question, we analyzed an aggregated dataset of network activity based on Firefox web browser usage worldwide (access to which was provided to us by Mozilla). To evaluate how useful Mozilla telemetry is for researching Internet shutdowns, we: * Selected case studies (known shutdown events from January 2020 onwards) * Analyzed Mozilla telemetry * Compared Mozilla telemetry with other public datasets We checked whether Mozilla telemetry provides signals for: * Myanmar -> Internet outages following February 2021 military coup * Uganda -> Nationwide internet outage amid 2021 elections * Belarus -> Internet outages amid 2020 elections * Iran -> Internet outages following 2020 elections *# Summary of key findings* We provide detailed analysis and findings for Myanmar, Uganda, Belarus, and Iran in our report: https://ooni.org/post/2021-investigating-internet-shutdowns-mozilla-telemet… Overall, based on our analysis for these 4 countries, we found: 1) *Mozilla telemetry provides strong signals for high impact internet shutdowns* -> When access to the internet was shut down entirely (such as in Uganda and Myanmar earlier this year), we observed a complete absence of Mozilla telemetry. This corroborates the absence of metrics that we also observe in other public datasets (such as IODA, Google traffic data, etc.) that are used to investigate internet shutdowns. 2) *Mozilla telemetry can also be used to infer lower impact internet shutdowns* -> When an internet shutdown is not "total" (when an internet shutdown doesn't impact all networks and/or regions in a country), it can still be possible to potentially infer that there is some internet disruption from the high percentage of connection timeouts and unreachable connections that are visible through Mozilla telemetry. We observed this, for example, for "lower impact" internet shutdowns in Belarus and Myanmar. Of course, it's important to cross-reference this data with other public datasets (such as IODA and Google traffic data). 3) *The geographical granularity of Mozilla telemetry provides new research opportunities* -> In Belarus, Mozilla telemetry showed a spike in connection timeouts and unreachable connections from multiple locations, suggesting that there may have been some reshaping of the network topology during the August 2020 Internet outage. 4) *Mozilla telemetry does not seem to provide signals for short-lived internet shutdowns (lasting less than 1 hour)* -> In Iran, Mozilla telemetry did not provide signals of the two short-lived internet outages that occurred on 3rd and 11th March 2020 (both of which lasted for less than an hour, and which were visible through IODA data). This is likely due to the fact that Mozilla telemetry is aggregated in hourly buckets, therefore missing short-lived internet outages. Overall, our analysis demonstrates that *Mozilla telemetry is a valuable resource for investigating Internet shutdowns worldwide*, providing novel insights through geographical data granularity. We encourage Mozilla to *publish aggregated Mozilla telemetry as open data* to support research & advocacy efforts investigating Internet shutdowns worldwide. We also share further recommendations in our report: https://ooni.org/post/2021-investigating-internet-shutdowns-mozilla-telemet… We thank Mozilla for providing us access to Mozilla telemetry for this research, and for considering our recommendations. Best, OONI team.

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Job Opening: Mobile Developer for OONI Probe
by Maria Xynou 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

Hello, I'm excited to share that we're hiring! The OONI team (a non-profit fighting internet censorship) is looking for a dedicated *mobile developer to work on OONI Probe*: a free software app designed to measure internet censorship and network performance. *Information about the job description, qualification requirements, and how to apply* are available here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-job-opening-ooni-mobile-developer/ This is a very exciting job opening because (if accepted) you will lead the development of the OONI Probe mobile app, supporting human rights defenders worldwide to investigate and fight internet censorship. Launched in 2017, the OONI Probe mobile app has more than 100k installs, and is run by tens of thousands of users in around 200 countries and territories every month. OONI Probe provides human rights defenders a user-friendly way to detect and collect evidence of internet censorship. This is a *full-time 12-month contract position* (which may be extended), starting ASAP. This is a *fully remote position*. We encourage applications from anywhere in the world! The application deadline is *Sunday, 31st October 2021*. Please help spread the word and help us find someone who can best serve the internet freedom community! Thank you, OONI team.

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OONI Community Meeting: Tomorrow, 26th October 2021
by Maria Xynou 25 Oct '21

25 Oct '21

Hello, The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us tomorrow for our monthly community meeting. *=> Where? *OONI Slack channel: https://slack.ooni.org/ (bridged with IRC: ircs://irc.oftc.net:6697/#ooni) *=> When?* Tuesday, *26th October 2021 at 14:00 UTC* (for 1 hour) Please add topics that you'd like to discuss during the meeting in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting-keep The monthly OONI community meetings aim to: * Collect community feedback on OONI tools & methodologies * Address questions in relation to the use of OONI tools and OONI data * Foster discussions on internet censorship issues * Receive updates from the community We hope you can join us! All the best, ~ OONI team

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[Report] How Signal Private Messenger App is Blocked Around the World
by Maria Xynou 22 Oct '21

22 Oct '21

Hello, The OONI team published a new research report which shares OONI data and analysis on the *blocking of the Signal Private Messenger App in Iran, China, Cuba, and Uzbekistan*. Read the report here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-how-signal-private-messenger-blocked-around-the-… In April 2021, we released a new OONI Probe test for measuring the blocking of the Signal Private Messenger App (https://ooni.org/nettest/signal) Since then, OONI community members tested Signal worldwide every day, contributing measurements as open data: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2021-10-23&since=2021-09-23&test_nam… We analyzed all Signal measurements collected from around the world *between April 2021 to September 2021*. During this period, we found that the testing of Signal primarily presented signs of blocking in Iran, China, Cuba, and Uzbekistan. *# Summary of Findings* *## Iran* In Iran, Signal was *tested on 32 AS networks*, consistently presenting signs of blocking on most networks. The block primarily appears to be performed at a DNS level by returning the IP address 10.10.34.35, which is commonly used to serve the Iranian blockpage. *## China* In China, Signal was *tested on 28 AS networks*, consistently presenting signs of blocking on most networks. Signal blocking is implemented at the DNS level, returning IP addresses inside of random IP ranges. China appears to block Signal by means of *bidirectional DNS injection*, as suggested by the fact that DNS queries from outside the country also result in injected responses, even though they target a publicly routed IP in China that does not run a DNS server. *## Cuba* In Cuba, Signal was *temporarily blocked in mid-July 2021* amid anti-government protests. OONI measurements show that the TLS handshake to the Signal backend service failed consistently with a connection_reset error, likely indicating the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology targeting the SNI field of the TLS handshake. *## Uzbekistan* In Uzbekistan, the testing of Signal presented *signs of blocking on 8 AS networks*. When attempting to perform a TLS handshake to all Signal backend services, the connection constantly times out after writing the first data packet to the network. This indicates that the blocking of Signal might be implemented through the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology configured to selectively drop packets. *# Circumvention* Currently, *circumvention is enabled by default* for Signal users in *Iran, Egypt, Oman, Qatar & the UAE*. In our view, this should probably be enabled for Signal users in Uzbekistan, China, and Cuba too. Signal users in other countries can: * On iOS -> Enable the “Censorship Circumvention” setting * On Android -> Use Signal TLS proxies: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360056052052-Proxy-Support You can help Android Signal users circumvent blocking (if they have a phone number which is not from Iran, Egypt, Oman, Qatar & the UAE) by: 1. Running a Signal TLS proxy: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-TLS-Proxy 2. Sharing the mobile deep link: https://signal.tube/#<your_host_name> *# Ongoing measurement* You can also help monitor the blocking of Signal by running OONI Probe ( https://ooni.org/install/) and contributing measurements ( https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2021-10-23&since=2021-09-23&test_nam…) as open data. We thank OONI Probe users who contributed measurements, supporting this study. We also thank Signal for their tireless efforts in bringing end-to-end encryption to the masses worldwide. Please help share this study: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1451482874264309763 Thanks for reading! Best, OONI team.

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