An encrypted proxy (Shadowsocks, Trojan, VMess) protects only the client-to-server segment; traffic from the proxy server to a non-HTTPS destination may be readable on the onward path. Applications not covered by system-proxy, TUN, or routing rules connect directly, bypassing the tunnel entirely.

Clash-family proxy clients carry specific leak vectors distinct from VPNs: DNS leaks, IPv6 leaks, TUN-mode misconfiguration, rule-set bypass, and application-layer exclusions. Subscription URLs are equivalent to credentials and must be kept private; rotating a URL without evidence of a leak does not mitigate operator-level risk.

§4.2, §5.3, §5.5 defense

Subscription endpoints, node lists, and client configurations require ongoing updates to remain functional against evolving blocking, but accepting automatic configuration updates introduces supply-chain risk. Open-source code makes inspection possible but does not prove the binary matches the source, that an audit was performed, or that the server follows its stated policy.

§3.2, §4.6 deployment

Traditional VPN and proxy protocols can both be detected, blocked, rate-limited, or disrupted by mainland network controls. Newer transport or obfuscation layers do not guarantee resistance; no client category is inherently undetectable, faster, lighter, or safer.

§4.4 detection

Provider identity mismatches are a documented risk: one reviewed provider (SSONE) displays the domain hello-ssone.com but its registration links to flybit6202.com. Resolving such domain-identity mismatches before entering credentials or paying is flagged as a required evaluation step.

§5.2 deployment

During the June 2025 Iran shutdown, circumvention tool performance diverged sharply by transport design. Psiphon's multi-protocol architecture sustained 1.5 million concurrent users—roughly one-third of its normal Iranian base. Lantern's "proxyless" protocol (domain-fronting via CDN, ~40% of Lantern's Iranian traffic) showed moderate success. Tor usage collapsed during the blackout but bridge connections surged and rebounded quickly after lifting. BeePass (serving 500k+ daily users at shutdown onset) used live A/B testing of port/obfuscation-prefix combinations to probe the censors' blocking parameters in real time. The Ceno Browser's P2P network grew from 600 active peers on June 13 to ~8,000 by July 11, indicating that decentralized fallback paths stayed up even during peak blocking.

2025-iran-shutdown-measurement §Tool Performance dpithrottling

The June 2025 Iran shutdown—carried out during the Iran-Israel war beginning ~June 19—did not use BGP route withdrawals as in 2019. Instead, authorities applied service-level restrictions at the national border: DNS poisoning of foreign destinations, protocol whitelisting permitting only pre-approved domestic services, and DPI to block circumvention-tool traffic. Iran's international traffic fell roughly 90% while the country's BGP routes remained advertised, making the shutdown invisible to BGP-based monitoring systems. OONI measurement volume, which totalled 121,333 in June 2025, collapsed to under 200 submissions on June 19-20.

2025-iran-shutdown-measurement Executive Summary / §2 dpidns-poisoningport-blockingip-blocking

During the June 2025 shutdown, Iranian authorities blocked international One-Time Password (OTP) SMS delivery, preventing new sign-ins to foreign secure-messaging platforms and VPN services. This forced users toward government-approved domestic platforms that lack security and privacy protections. The blockade of OTPs effectively weaponized account-recovery flows as a secondary shutdown layer, disproportionately affecting users who needed to activate new circumvention tools during the crisis.

2025-iran-shutdown-measurement §Human Rights Implications port-blockingdpikeyword-filtering

Input blocking in Chinese LLM services (DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, Doubao) is overwhelmingly consistent: all four services persistently block the exact same queries across all 5 measurement samples in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Output blocking is far less consistent, with only 29 out of 349 output-blocked queries blocked across all 5 samples. Baidu-Chat is exceptional: it performs almost no input blocking but instead relies heavily on post-search and output blocking (78.6% of blocks are output-phase).

2026-ablove-characterizing §VI-B keyword-filteringdpi

TSG's Context-Based Detector (CBD) evaluates circumvention tool signatures across JA3/JA4 TLS fingerprints, SSL certificate issuer fields, UDP payload length, first-packet byte patterns, server IP ranges, and FQDN matches, often combining multiple conditions with logical AND. Of 29 VPN and circumvention tool signatures logged in the VPN Signature File Update Log (March–November 2024), 21 carry risk level 5 (the maximum), indicating aggressive prioritization of blocking major tools including ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Tor Browser, and Psiphon.

2026-ablove-technical-analysis-geedge §4.1, §4.1.2, Table 3, Table 4 dpitls-fingerprinttraffic-shapeip-blockingsni-blocking

Measurements of TCP RST injectors confirm that GFW II and GFW III consistently yield a seed key k=13, matching TSG's default seed_key parameter in trick_algo_getrandval_with_seed. The probability of sharing TSG's default value of 13 by chance is approximately 10⁻⁴⁴, strongly indicating these GFW components run Geedge Networks TSG code or a close derivative.

2026-ablove-technical-analysis-geedge §6.3, Table 7 rst-injectiondpi