[tor-bugs] #25137 [Obfuscation/Censorship analysis]: Tor blocked in UAE

Tue Feb 6 21:10:14 UTC 2018

#25137: Tor blocked in UAE
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 Reporter:  mwolfe                           |          Owner:  dcf
     Type:  defect                           |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium                           |      Milestone:
Component:  Obfuscation/Censorship analysis  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                           |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  censorship block ae              |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                                   |         Points:
 Reviewer:                                   |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by dcf):

 Replying to [comment:7 cypherpunks]:
 > Replying to [comment:6 cypherpunks]:
 > > > I'm pretty sure that the relay users graph is bogus, and that there
 are not really 300,000 users
 > >
 > > With spikes on every [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumu%27ah Friday]
 > Can't tell that from looking at shorter and more accurate ranges.

If you want to look more precisely, you can download the CSV file that
 makes the graph.
 https://metrics.torproject.org/stats/clients.csv
 https://metrics.torproject.org/stats.html#clients
 The column you want is `clients`, which is the second to last.
 {{{#!html
 <pre>
 $ grep ,relay,ae, clients.csv
 ...
 2018-01-29,relay,ae,,,222127,451790,315812,77
 2018-01-30,relay,ae,,,200043,424856,336896,78
 2018-01-31,relay,ae,,,210268,369871,407466,80
 2018-02-01,relay,ae,,,257323,398240,445036,78
 2018-02-02,relay,ae,,,289167,485726,493804,80
 2018-02-03,relay,ae,,,215267,444106,390208,81
 2018-02-04,relay,ae,,,193048,382601,363009,85
 2018-02-05,relay,ae,,,203610,398592,361683,56
 </pre>
 }}}

 If you zoom in far enough on the graphs, there are grid lines for each
 week. The lines fall on Mondays, so yes, it looks like the spikes on on
 Fridays. I'm not sure if/how that's affected by time zones (i.e. I think
 the graphs count Friday in UTC, not in the UAE time zone).

 > BTW I said this back then on irc but no one seemed to care: it seems
 that one of their ISPs (is it the only one? It's probably named Etisalat
 IIRC) had/still has some ports open that most other ISPs in the world had
 blocked to protect their customers, this is without a shred of doubt a
 botnet.

 Thanks for this information. I didn't know that. Do you know what the port
 numbers are, or any additional information? If so, please add it to the
 table at [[doc/MetricsTimeline#Unknown]]. (Seems like there should be a
 ticket for the UAE anomalies, but

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25137#comment:9>
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