News, updates, and announcements

China’s National Anti-Fraud Center - Security Assessment

Editor’s Note: The auditors did not go through a coordinated disclosure process regarding the vulnerabilities discovered in this report due to the risks involved with engaging a potentially sensitive adversary. However, due to their commitment to privacy and security transparency, the auditors still wish to share their findings.

FileZilla: Making Old School Protocol Cool Again

2020 ICFP Wrap Up

OTF’s seventh class of Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP) fellows consists of researchers from both social science and computer science backgrounds. This cohort focuses on research related to various censorship techniques employed by China and the avenues for circumvention. With the cohort’s fellowships completed, we’d like to highlight these fellows and the accomplishments they achieved during their time as ICFP fellows.

7ASecurity, OTF Red Team Lab partner, completes Blackbox Pentest and Privacy Audit of LeaveHomeSafe App

Nation-State Censorship Infrastructures Pose a Risk to the Entire Internet

IFF-supported Geneva project discovers attackers can weaponize censors to launch attacks on victims beyond state borders

OTF at RightsCon 2022

Multiple Vantage Point Validation to Secure Domain Validation

This OTF-supported effort aids the deployment of a more secure domain validation protocol to secure Internet domain validation against attackers that manipulate Internet routing via Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijack and interception attacks.

Exposing the Great Firewall's Dynamic Blocking of Fully Encrypted Traffic

This report demonstrates how the GFW identifies and blocks seemingly random traffic, and discusses the implications of such blocking incidents.

OTF’s Budget for the 2022 Fiscal Year

The Effect of Censorship Circumvention on Information Transmission

The following blog post captures the research from an OTF ICFP fellow on the effect of censorship circumvention on information transmission.

A Quick Look at QUIC Censorship

The following blog post was written by ICFP fellow Kathrin Elmenhorst as a summary of their work and research on the QUIC general-purpose transport layer network.

Red Team Lab Refreshes its Information Security Services

OTF is excited to announce the refresh and revamp of its Red Team Lab to carry out security assessments of software projects seeking to enhance privacy and security for their users.

The Evolution of ICFP: From Inception to Impact

The open application window for the ninth class of OTF’s Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP) presents an opportunity to look back on how the program arrived at its current state.

Announcing OTF’S Newest Class of Information Controls Fellows

Eighth cohort of ICFP fellows to research potential or existing circumvention techniques; the use of circumvention tools during censorship events; mitigating potential security vulnerabilities in access and privacy tools; identifying the specific tools used in individual countries for information controls; and more.

Information Controls Fellowship Program Now Accepting Applications for Ninth Cohort

OTF’s Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP) is open for applications for its ninth fellowship cohort, with a final deadline of March 13, 2022.

Automating Censorship Evasion Strategies to Unlock Closed Societies

IFF-supported Geneva project revolutionizes censorship circumvention via real-world deployment of genetic algorithms

OTF Conducts Security Audit of Hypha

Connecting and Building: Welcome to Our Secure Usability and Accessibility Lab

OTF is excited to announce the revamp of our Secure Usability and Accessibility Lab (formerly called “Usability Lab”) and share lessons learned from our community-led consultation and evaluation, which informed this update.

Methodologies and tools for open dialogue in the defense of digital rights

Sursiendo is a Mexican organization working to defend digital rights in order to achieve a more open and collaborative environment. As part of Sursiendo’s work, the organization has accompanied social organizations in digital care by working to ensure that skill-building processes are closer to contexts and methodologies adapted to each reality. That is why Sursiendo believes that analyzing one’s own actions is essential to improving this approach. Sursiendo’s collaboration with OTF has contributed to this direction.

GFWatch: A Longitudinal Measurement Platform Built to Monitor China's DNS Censorship at Scale

The following blog post is authored by Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP) fellow Hoàng Nguyên Phong. As an ICFP fellow, Phong's research examines China’s DNS filtering mechanism, one of the techniques deployed by China's Great Firewall (GFW). DNS filtering is a process of interfering with DNS resolutions, which are used to map human-memorable domain names (such as "opentech.fund") to their hosting IP address(es), to prevent access to undesired content. Working with the host organization, Citizen Lab at University of Toronto, Phong built GFWatch, a measurement platform that allows researchers to continuously monitor the GFW’s DNS filtering behavior.