United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days

Post by runn1ng » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 10:33 PM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #32

blunte wrote: post #28

What this really indicates, bot or not, is that once you educate people, they will act in their self (and more importantly, self+others) interests. Oppressive and controlling (controlling or controling, I can never decide) regimes will try to prevent it. But it is like trying to prevent wind. The wind will come. You must adapt and accept. And if you are against the wind, you must change.

I appreciate the poetry but blocking Tor is a lot easier than preventing the wind and some governments (e.g. China) successfully do so.

Post by TheSageMage » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 10:43 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #45

benjojo12 wrote: post #41

I believe that tor metrics counts when a connection starts, not when a connection is _established_ This is a important difference, because if there is active DPI that is shutting down a connection before handshake can happen, it will inflate the numbers massively. I suspect what actually is happening is a ISP in UAE has deployed a DPI system that can detect the Tor TLS signature

This sounds convincing, a 25-fold spike in real users seems unlikely. If your theory is correct, then the title is slightly misleading.

Post by indice » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 11:05 PM UTC

indice wrote: post #54

The same rise was seen in Turkey last month. The phenomenon is caused by failed reconnect due to DPI-based censorship. See Annex A: https://turkeyblocks.org/2016/12/18/tor-blocked-in-turkey-vp...

Post by TheSageMage » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 11:18 PM UTC

Post by TheSageMage » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 11:49 PM UTC

27182818284 wrote: post #58

TheSageMage wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title isn't misleading, "the estimated number of directly-connecting clients" is what is meant by "users". I'm not very familiar with TOR, but does this reaffirm what OP is asking, that this might be DPI causing re-connections for TOR in UAE? If so is this a new policy of banning TOR, or is this just a recent ramp up in existing policy?

It is a little misleading. Misleading I think should be the correct word choice. It might not be incorrect, but it is misleading. Another example that comes to mind is the Colorado newspaper headline that crime has "doubled" in the last decade. That leads a person down the train of thought that crime is out of control. In reality, it grew in proportion to the population. The headline, "Crime grows in proportion with…