Circumventing censorship with collage

Oppressive regimes and even democratic governments restrict Internet access. Existing anti-censorship systems often require users to connect through proxies, but these systems are relatively easy for a censor to discover and block. We explore a possible next step in the censorship arms race: rather than relying on a single system or set of proxies to circumvent censorship firewalls, we use the vast deployment of sites that host user-generated content to breach these firewalls. We have developed Collage, which allows users to exchange messages through hidden channels in sites that host user-generated content. To send a message, a user embeds it into cover traffic and posts the content on some site, where receivers retrieve this content. Collage makes it difficult for a censor to monitor or block these messages by exploiting the sheer number of sites where users can exchange messages and the variety of ways that a message can be hidden. We have built a censorship-resistant news reader u...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: SIGCOMM
• Authors: Sam Burnett, Nick Feamster, Santosh Vempala
• Keywords: Censorship Arms Race, Censorship Firewall, Communications, SIGCOMM 2010, User-generated Content