Censorship Measurement of the Nym network

OONI-Probe tests for the Nym network

This repository introduces a new type of Go test for Nym network censorship. Our tests are performed using the OONI probe.

• First, the test evaluates the connectivity to the to the validator API, which is a necessary step to allow users access to the Nym network, as it allows the Nym client to retrieve vital information such as the list of active relay nodes, gateways, their topology, and the necessary credentials for network access.
• After successfully fetching the list of available gateways in the initial test, a second test is conducted to determine the reachability of these gateways. Since the Nym network topology mandates that packets are routed through a gateway before entering the mixnet, being able to connect to at least one gateway is crucial for network access. To assess this, the test attempts to establish connections with each gateway individually.

Requirements

To be able able to run the tests, you should have docker and docker-compose installed. You can follow this procedure to install docker desktop which contains docker and docker-compose and a GUI to manage docker. Once installed and running, you can run the docker tests.

How to run the tests ?

From the command line, enter the CensorshipMeasurements folder by running the command

  cd CensorshipMeasurements

and run in the command line (note, your Docker desktop app should be open at this point)

docker-compose up

By using docker-compose, it will build the image, install the requirements inside the image, compile the binaries for the test and run the test. The result will be in the directory ./results in file report.jsonl.

To force to build again each time, you can do

docker-compose up --build

Please share your report.jsonl with us.

Licensing and copyright information

This program is available as open source under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license.

Troubleshooting

If you run docker-compose up and get an error:

Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?

this means that you forgot to open your Docker desktop app.

Notes

The environment variable OONI_NYMVALIDATORURL can be used to modify the validator server to reach for the tests. By default, it is "https://validators.nymtech.net".

OONI_NYMVALIDATORURL="https://validators.nymtech.net" docker-compose up