Help build censorship resistance with the Nym censorship test!
Nym is building the private internet. A new test will help Nym core team gauge if the mixnet is being censored — and how to fight it.
A new test will help Nym core team gauge if the Nym mixnet is being censored — and if so, how to fight it.
Governments everywhere are attacking freedom of information. To keep the Nym mixnet operational in the face of future attacks or shut-offs, it’s critical that censorship resistance is built into the very fabric of the mixnet and continuously improved. In order to understand the current level of censorship, the Nym core team has built a censorship measurement test. Community members are strongly encouraged to download and run the test, and share their results!
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The Nym mixnet is a global, decentralised, trustless, layer-0 infrastructure for the private internet. It obscures network traffic from observers, and allows users to communicate securely and access information free from interference. However, this infrastructure only has value provided people can actually use it.
The Nym mixnet splits data into equally sized, encrypted packets before dispersing these via ‘hops’ through nodes all over the planet and decrypting them at the receiving end. This is a powerful privacy-preserving feature. But it is possible that observers can mark this traffic as unusual, and respond by blocking or limiting access to the parts of the network they suspect are tied to Nym.
The purpose of this Censorship Measurement test is to ascertain if any part of the Nym mixnet is currently being blocked by governments and, if so, how they are doing it.
Built with Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) software, gathering this data will lay the groundwork for fighting back against censorship today while building a more censorship-resistant mixnet tomorrow.
Download the repository here. Read on for how to run it:
How to run the Nym Censorship Measurement Test
Two tests are included in the repository.
The first test evaluates connectivity to the validator API, a step that allows users to access the Nym network. The validator API allows the Nym client to retrieve crucial information like the list of active relay nodes, gateways, network topology, and the necessary credentials for access.
Once this initial test has successfully fetched the list of available gateways, a second test determines that gateways can be reached.
Because the Nym mixnet works by routing packets through a gateway before they can enter the mixnet, users need to connect to at least one gateway.
To run the test, first, ensure that both docker and docker-compose are installed. If you don’t have docker or docker-compose, then you can download Docker Desktop here, which contains both.
Download and extract the Nym CensorshipMeasurements repository.
To start the test, make sure Docker Desktop is running and open your Command Line Interface.
Navigate to wherever you extracted the CensorshipMeasurements folder with the command:
cd CensorshipMeasurements
With Docker running, enter the following into the command line:
docker-compose up
This will build the image, compile the binaries for the test, and run the test.
Results will be found in the CensorshipMeasurements folder in /results in the report.jsonl file.
To build the image again, you can enter the following in your command line instead:
docker-compose up -- build
And that’s all.
NOTE: If the docker-compose up command returns a ‘Docker daemon’ error, this means that you forgot to open your Docker Desktop application before running the command.
Share your report to build global censorship resistance
Please share your report.jsonl file with Nym via email or in the General channel of the Nym Matrix server! Be sure to indicate which country the measurement was taken in.
It’s extremely important that Nym community members and operators submit this data so that the core team can analyse if the mixnet is being blocked and where.
If Nym is being blocked, the core team will analyse how this is taking place and take steps to build more censorship resistance into the mixnet.
It is probable that censorship resistance with the Nym mixnet will be a continuous process, like a game of cat and mouse.
But in order to understand how to circumvent censorship as it occurs, Nym first has to know that it’s taking place and how it’s happening, so download and run the Nym Censorship Measurement test today!
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