[ooni-talk] New Report: Iran blocks social media, app stores and encrypted DNS amid protests

[Maria Xynou]

Hello,

Today OONI published a new report documenting the latest censorship events
in Iran amid the ongoing protests.

Read the report here:
https://ooni.org/post/2022-iran-blocks-social-media-mahsa-amini-protests/

*# Key Findings*

OONI data shows new blocking events in Iran amid ongoing protests:

** Increased blocking of encrypted DNS. *As of 20th September 2022, OONI
data shows that ISPs in Iran started blocking DNS over HTTPS (DoH)
endpoints by means of DNS based tampering (returning bogons), in addition
to implementing TLS level interference. Previously reachable DoH endpoints
(such as cloudflare-dns.com) are now blocked.

** Blocking of WhatsApp and Instagram. *As of 21st September 2022, OONI
data shows that many ISPs in Iran started blocking access to WhatsApp
endpoints, web.whatsapp.com, and www.instagram.com. We mostly observe
TCP/IP blocking, with additional DNS and TLS blocking.

** Blocking of Google Play Store and Apple App Store. *As of 22nd September
2022, OONI data shows that multiple ISPs in Iran started blocking access to
Google Play Store and Apple App Store domains.

** Blocking of Skype and Linkedin. *As of 23rd September 2022, OONI data
shows the blocking of Skype, while the blocking of Linkedin is
automatically confirmed on at least 10 networks in Iran.

In addition to the above blocks (and many other long-term blocks), Iran
experienced *5 major outages affecting mobile networks* over the past week,
which are visible in the IODA, Cloudflare Radar and Kentik datasets.

OONI data suggests that Psiphon and Tor Snowflake work in Iran, and can
potentially be used for censorship circumvention.

We also share the key findings of our study in this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1574108767226155008

You can continue to monitor censorship events in Iran through real-time
OONI data:
https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/mat?probe_cc=IR&test_name=web_connectivity&since=2022-08-26&until=2022-09-26&axis_x=measurement_start_day

We thank OONI Probe users in Iran who contributed measurements, supporting
this study. <3

~ OONI team.
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