Information Controls Fellow Kathrin worked with the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) to investigate HTTP3 censorship.
QUIC is a new internet protocol which uses encryption by design and is the transport for the new major version of HTTP: HTTP/3. With the growing deployment of HTTP/3, Kathrin’s project aims to monitor the state of HTTP/3 censorship and explore approaches for QUIC censorship circumvention.
Kathrin conducted a study measuring the level and type of QUIC censorship in various countries. From there, she derived and drafted building blocks for (automated) QUIC censorship evasion. QUIC has promising potential for censorship circumvention since it is implemented on the application layer. Therefore, QUIC evasion tools would be easily deployable, adaptable and platform independent. Kathrin also further developed and documented measurement procedures for QUIC.
Katherin produced a report which provides an introduction to QUIC, its potential for censorship resistance, as well as a survey of current QUIC blocking in various countries.
As QUIC usage has increased since its introduction, it has become the target of censorship efforts. Monitoring developments in QUIC censorship since its launch has enabled the anti-censorship community to develop appropriate censorship evasion tools as early as possible. Beyond that, the measurements provide unique insights into how censorship systems are maintained and adapted to change.
