[liberationtech] Tor: Increased Internet blocking in Iran

[Adam Fisk]

Thanks Cyrus. So they're blocking based on ports, not based on DPI?
The port switch really solves this? That seems odd. -Adam

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 4:06 AM, Cyrus Farivar <cfarivar at cfarivar.org> wrote:
> http://internetofelsewhere.com/blog/2011/01/12/tor-increased-internet-blocking-in-iran/
>
> The Tor Project, the gold standard of online anonymization tools, is
> reporting that within the last few days, there’s been an uptick in the
> Iranian government’s actions against domestic Internet access.
>
> They write:
>
>   "Over the past 48 hours it seems the Great Persian Firewall is
> updating to attempt to block a number of circumvention tools,
> including Tor. Iranians and their diaspora have been reporting to us
> that Tor, Hot Spot Shield, UltraSurf, and Freegate are all
> experiencing connectivity problems from inside Iran to the outside
> world.
>
>   Our research indicates that ssl-based communications are being
> throttled to 2 kilobit per second rates or simply blocked altogether.
> This is inclusive of basic ssh, ssl, vpns, and other proxy
> technologies. We’re continuing to work on what’s really happening and
> likely means to counter. The short answer is to use bridges that are
> not on port 443."
>
> Global Voices, meanwhile, provides a little political context:
>
>   "Given Iran’s recent rhetoric against Green Movement leaders as
> well as its planned 10 day assault against the Green Movement what Tor
> and others may be seeing is the digital realization of these political
> statements and actions within the country. In the past, changes to
> Iran’s filters have been tested on certain ISPs within the country
> before being implemented nationwide. If the regime is moving towards
> digitizing its most recent statements and actions, what the Tor
> Project is seeing now could be localized testing of a planned national
> rollout."
>
> From my perspective, this is yet another episode in the constant
> cat-and-mouse game that is being played out in Iran. Given that the
> number of connections from Iran to the outside world is around a half
> dozen, futzing with port blocking and other forms of censorship is
> pretty trivial.
>
> All the best from Germany,
>
> -C
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------
> Cyrus Farivar
> "suh-ROOS FAR-ih-var"
>
>  Freelance Technology Journalist
> cfarivar at cfarivar.org
>
> DE: +49 163 763 3108 (m)
> US: +1 510 394 5485 (m)
>
> AIM: FarivarCJ
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>
> http://www.cyrusfarivar.com
>
> "Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet."
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-- 
Adam Fisk
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