Citation
Eric Wustrow, Colleen Swanson, Alex Halderman. "TapDance: End-to-Middle Anticensorship without Flow Blocking". Usenix Security 2014, 20, August, 2014.

Abstract
In response to increasingly sophisticated state-sponsored Internet censorship, recent research has proposed a new approach to censorship resistance: end-to-middle proxying. This concept, developed in systems such as Telex, Decoy Routing, and Cirripede, moves anticensorship technology into the core of the network, at large ISPs outside the censoring country. In this paper, we focus on two technical barriers to the deployment of end-to-middle proxy designs-- the need to selectively block flows, and the need to observe both directions of a connection-- and we propose a new construction, TapDance, that avoids these shortcomings. To accomplish this, we employ a novel TCP-level technique that allows the anticensorship station at an ISP to function as a passive network tap, without an inline blocking component. We also apply a novel steganographic encoding to embed control messages in TLS ciphertext, allowing us to operate on HTTPS connections even with asymmetric flows. We implement and evaluate a proof-of-concept prototype of TapDance with the goal of functioning with minimal impact on normal ISP operations.

Electronic downloads

• Wustrow_TapDance_Usenix.pdf · application/pdf · 1525 kbytes
• https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity14/technical-sessions/presentation/wustrow
• https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/tapdance-sec14.pdf

• HTML

  Eric Wustrow, Colleen Swanson, Alex Halderman. <a
  href="http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/324.html"
  >TapDance: End-to-Middle Anticensorship without Flow
  Blocking</a>, Usenix Security 2014, 20, August, 2014.

• Plain text

  Eric Wustrow, Colleen Swanson, Alex Halderman.
  "TapDance: End-to-Middle Anticensorship without Flow
  Blocking". Usenix Security 2014, 20, August, 2014.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{WustrowSwansonHalderman14_TapDanceEndtoMiddleAnticensorshipWithoutFlowBlocking,
      author = {Eric Wustrow and Colleen Swanson and Alex Halderman},
      title = {TapDance: End-to-Middle Anticensorship without
                Flow Blocking},
      booktitle = {Usenix Security 2014},
      day = {20},
      month = {August},
      year = {2014},
      abstract = {In response to increasingly sophisticated
                state-sponsored Internet censorship, recent
                research has proposed a new approach to censorship
                resistance: end-to-middle proxying. This concept,
                developed in systems such as Telex, Decoy Routing,
                and Cirripede, moves anticensorship technology
                into the core of the network, at large ISPs
                outside the censoring country. In this paper, we
                focus on two technical barriers to the deployment
                of end-to-middle proxy designs-- the need to
                selectively block flows, and the need to observe
                both directions of a connection-- and we propose a
                new construction, TapDance, that avoids these
                shortcomings. To accomplish this, we employ a
                novel TCP-level technique that allows the
                anticensorship station at an ISP to function as a
                passive network tap, without an inline blocking
                component. We also apply a novel steganographic
                encoding to embed control messages in TLS
                ciphertext, allowing us to operate on HTTPS
                connections even with asymmetric flows. We
                implement and evaluate a proof-of-concept
                prototype of TapDance with the goal of functioning
                with minimal impact on normal ISP operations.},
      URL = {http://terraswarm.org/pubs/324.html}
  }
  

Posted by Barb Hoversten on 12 Jun 2014.
Groups: services