Exploring Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) for Censorship Circumvention
Authors: Michael Pu (University of Waterloo), Andrew Wang (University of Waterloo), Anthony Chang (University of Waterloo), Kieran Quan (University of Waterloo), Yi Wei Zhou (University of Waterloo)
Year: 2024
Issue: 2
Pages: 22–26
Abstract: The Snowflake censorship circumvention system uses blocking- resistant rendezvous methods to connect clients to proxies. This paper describes our experience implementing a new rendezvous method that uses Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) and discusses its suitability as a general signalling channel. We provide an overview of the implementation followed by some of the design decisions and implementation details that we encountered. The SQS rendezvous method has been deployed in the latest version of Snowflake and the Tor Browser. It has served over 14808 client connections from over 20 countries, including Iran, the United States, China, and Russia. Additionally, we present a country-wise breakdown of users utilizing the existing Snowflake rendezvous methods, as determined by our newly implemented metrics
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