[tor-talk] Sonic Firewall, Iran related?

[Collin Anderson]

Malaysia or Singapore?

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 1:32 PM, Nathan Freitas <nathan at freitas.net> wrote:

>
> I have been in touch with an Orbot user at a university somewhere in a
> relatively free country in Asia, who just a week or so ago found that it
> no longer worked for him. He was unable to connect to the Tor network
> either directly or with bridges, and it seemed like SSL related errors
> were occuring.
>
> He wrote me today saying this:
> "Today I had a talk with the head of computer department, he said that
> the sonic wall blocking policies are automatically updated and they
> can't do anything with that."
>
> While I do not know who "automatically updated" their firewall rules, it
> is interesting that this wasn't a targeted Tor thing by the local admin,
> but some wider deployment, perhaps directly from Sonic corporate
> themselves.
>
> On a hunch, I sent him the new Orbot+OBFS bundle to test out, and it
> worked like a charm. He was very excited, and has promised to be a loyal
> tester. It indeed seems like they were doing a similar SSL/TLS DPI
> block/filter as what is happening in Iran.
>
> Now the timing of all of this, and the similar approach to filtering
> made me curious if this could perhaps be related... could some ISP or
> national NOC in Iran be running the same product as this university in
> Asia?
>
> Regardless, it seems like the SSL/TLS DPI might become a standard
> tactic, and the needs for obfsproxy will be growing rapidly.
>
> +n
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-- 
*Collin David Anderson*
averysmallbird.com | @cda | Washington, D.C.