Ethiopia Introduces Deep Packet Inspection
The Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation, which happens to be the sole telecommunication service provider in Ethiopia, has deployed or begun testing Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) of all Internet traffic. We have previously analyzed the same kind of censorship in China, Iran, and Kazakhstan.
Reports show that Tor stopped working a week ago -- even with bridges configured. Websites such as https://gmail.com/, https://facebook.com/, https://twitter.com/, and even https://torproject.org/ continue to work. The graphs below show the effects of this deployment of censorship based on Deep Packet Inspection:
An analysis of data collected by a volunteer shows that they are doing some sort of TLS fingerprinting. The TLS server hello, which is sent by the Tor bridge after the TLS client hello, never reaches the client. We don't know exactly what they are fingerprinting on, but our guess is that it is either the client hello or the server hello. An illustration can be found in this network flow diagram.
Thanks to Philipp Winter and George Kadianakis for helping me analyze the data. If you have more information about the censorship in Ethiopia, please email help@rt.torproject.org.
Thank you guys for exposing
Thank you guys for exposing the censorship in Ethiopia from technical perspective. The Ethiopian Government has been applying a filtering/ blocking system from its only server/ Ethiopian Telecommunication/ to blog pro- democracy sites. People have used proxy servers to access block sites.
The government has also officially confirmed using air jamming technologies to jam radio transmission signals from VOA & pro democracy site; ESAT.
Guess now it's a leap forward to them! What a dictatorship!
I tried to browse internet
I tried to browse internet through tor in vain. For almost a week or two, it is difficult to access through Tor.
I thought the failure was due to slow internet connection. I now understand it is censorship. Melese Zenawi is a dictator, He is a killer. We need freedom, freedom, freedom.........
On the Democracy Index
On the Democracy Index Ethiopia ranks low at 121 of 167
right between Morocco and Kuwait. It is considered as an
authoritarian regime. No surprise here.
I remember they deal a lot with China which is always eager to
include its telecom technologies in their deals.