Hello,
Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) project published a new report, titled: "*Measuring Internet Censorship in Cuba's ParkNets*"
You can read the report here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/cuba-internet-censorship-2017/
https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/902229490495053824
Last May we traveled to Cuba and performed a variety of network measurement tests across eight vantage points in Havana, Santa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba, with the aim of measuring internet censorship.
As part of our study, we were able to confirm the *blocking of 41 websites*. Many of these sites include news outlets and blogs, as well as pro-democracy and human rights sites. Many of the blocked sites, directly or indirectly, express criticism towards the Cuban government. Interestingly enough though, various other international sites which also express criticism were found to be accessible.
Web proxies, like Anonymouse, were amongst those found to be blocked, potentially limiting Cubans' ability to circumvent censorship. The Tor network though was found to be accessible across the country, likely because Cuba has relatively few Tor users.
*Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology was found to be resetting connections and serving (blank) block pages.* Through latency measurements, we were able to confirm that the blocking server is most likely located in Havana (and in any case, for sure in Cuba). Only the HTTP version of sites was found to be blocked, potentially enabling users to circumvent the censorship by merely accessing them over HTTPS. Most blocked sites, however, do not support HTTPS.
*Skype was found to be blocked. *By examining packet traces, we were able to determine that the DPI middlebox blocked Skype by means of RST injection. Other popular communications tools, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, were found to be accessible.
*Chinese vendor Huawei was also found to be supporting Cuba's internet infrastructure.* The server header of blocked sites, for example, pointed to Huawei equipent. It remains unclear though whether they are actually implementing internet censorship in the country.
Lastly, we accidentally discovered that *Google is blocking Google App Engine from Cuba (when trying to run NDT).*
Overall, internet censorship does not appear to be particularly sophisticated in Cuba. The high cost of the internet and the limited availability of public wifi hotspots across the country remain the main barriers to accessing the internet. But as Cuba's internet landscape evolves, so might techniques and practices around internet censorship. Therefore, we think it's important to continue to measure networks with ooniprobe in Cuba and elsewhere around the world.
Thanks for reading our latest report - happy to address any questions you may have!
~ The OONI team.