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Published byAshlynn Cook Modified over 9 years ago
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The Parrot is Dead: Observing Unobservable Network Communications
Amir Houmansadr Chad Brubaker Vitaly Shmatikov
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Internet Censorship The Internet is a big threat to repressive regimes! Repressive regimes censor the Internet: IP filtering, DNS hijacking, Deep packet-inspection, etc. Circumvention systems
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X Censorship Region The Internet Allowed Destination Blocked
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Censorship Region The Internet DPI X Blocked Destination
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We need unobservable circumvention
Censors should not be able to identify circumvention traffic or end-hosts through passive, active, or proactive techniques
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Let’s hide! Censorship Region The Internet
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Parrot systems Imitate a popular protocol SkypeMorph (CCS’12)
StegoTorus (CCS’12) CensorSpoofer (CCS’12)
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What's, uh... What's wrong with it? 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
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SkypeMorph The Internet Censorship Region Traffic Shaping SkypeMorph
A Tor node SkypeMorph Bridge SkypeMorph Client
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SoM header The start of message (SoM) header field is MISSING!
Single-packet identifier, instead of sophisticated statistical traffic analysis
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SkypeMorph The Internet Censorship Region TCP control SkypeMorph
Bridge A Tor node SkypeMorph Client
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No, no.....No, 'e's stunned!
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Let’s imitate the missing!
SkypeMorph+ Let’s imitate the missing! Hard to mimic dynamic behavior Active/proactive tests
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Dropping UDP packets
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Other tests Test Skype SkypeMorph+ Flush Supernode cache
Serves as a SN Rejects all Skype messages Drop UDP packets Burst of packets in TCP control No reaction Close TCP channel Ends the UDP stream Delay TCP packets Reacts depending on the type of message Close TCP connection to a SN Initiates UDP probes Block the default TCP port Connects to TCP ports 80 and 443
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Now that's what I call a dead parrot.
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StegoTorus The Internet Censorship Region HTTP HTTP A Tor node
Bridge Skype Ventrilo HTTP StegoTorus Client
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StegoTorus chopper Dependencies between links
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StegoTorus-Skype The same attacks as SkypeMorph Even more attacks!
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StegoTorus-HTTP Does not look like a typical HTTP server!
Most HTTP methods not supported!
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CensorSpoofer The Internet Censorship Region SIP Spoofer server
Censored destination RTP downstream Dummy host RTP upstream CensorSpoofer Client
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SIP probing The Internet Censorship Region SIP Spoofer server Censored
destination RTP downstream Dummy host RTP upstream CensorSpoofer Client
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No no! 'E's pining! 'E's not pinin'! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker!
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Unobservability by imitation is fundamentally flawed!
Lesson 1 Unobservability by imitation is fundamentally flawed!
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Imitation Requirements
Correct SideProtocols IntraDepend InterDepend Err Network Content Patterns Users Geo Soft OS
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Partial imitation is worse than no imitation!
Lesson 2 Partial imitation is worse than no imitation!
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Alternative Do not imitate, but Run the target protocol
IP over Voice-over-IP [NDSS’13] Challenge: efficiency
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Thanks
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