ICLab - A Global, Longitudinal Internet Censorship Measurement Platform

Explore the global landscape of Internet censorship through ICLab, a comprehensive measurement platform designed for longitudinal research. Learn about the innovative approach using commercial VPNs as vantage points to achieve a balance between breadth of coverage and measurement detail. Discover how ICLab detects various censorship techniques, including DNS manipulation, TCP packet injection, and overt block pages. Analyze the findings from over 53 million web page measurements collected in 2017 and 2018, revealing blocking of 3,602 unique URLs across 60 countries. Gain insights into regional differences in blocking techniques, observe political shifts reflected in censorship changes, and uncover 48 previously unknown block pages. Delve into the platform's ability to expose other forms of network interference, such as surveillance and malware injection, while understanding the importance of minimizing false positives and enabling retrospective analysis through detailed data archiving.

Intro
Internet Censorship
Why Measure Censorship?
Networking 101: HTTP Transaction
How does censorship work?
Studies in Censorship Research
Why We Built Our Own Platform?
ICLab: Global and Continuous Monitoring
ICLab: Vantage Points
ICLab: Control Node
ICLab: Data Collection
ICLab: Censorship Detection
DNS Manipulation
TCP Packet Injection
HTML-based Block Pages: Detection
HTML-based Block Pages: Discovery
Different Observations from Different Test Lists
Different Methods for Different Content
Censorship Changes over Time
Detected Other Network Attacks
Summary