Network Traffic Obfuscation and Automated Internet Censorship
It tackles internet censorship for activists and researchers, but is incremental as it is a survey paper.
This survey addresses the problem of internet censorship by providing an overview of network traffic obfuscation mechanisms used to hide connections from deep-packet inspection, and discusses research on detection methods and challenges in circumvention efforts.
Internet censors seek ways to identify and block internet access to information they deem objectionable. Increasingly, censors deploy advanced networking tools such as deep-packet inspection (DPI) to identify such connections. In response, activists and academic researchers have developed and deployed network traffic obfuscation mechanisms. These apply specialized cryptographic tools to attempt to hide from DPI the true nature and content of connections. In this survey, we give an overview of network traffic obfuscation and its role in circumventing Internet censorship. We provide historical and technical background that motivates the need for obfuscation tools, and give an overview of approaches to obfuscation used by state of the art tools. We discuss the latest research on how censors might detect these efforts. We also describe the current challenges to censorship circumvention research and identify concrete ways for the community to address these challenges.