FreeWave, the VoIP-based predecessor, was vulnerable to passive traffic analysis because its covert Skype streams exhibited packet-size distributions different from legitimate calls, enabling detection with high probability. DeltaShaper's video-based approach with EMD-constrained encoding addresses this specific failure mode, but at a severe throughput cost: FreeWave achieves 18.75 Kbps vs DeltaShaper's 2.56–3.12 Kbps goodput. Competing systems benchmark: CovertCast ~168 Kbps (no unobservability constraints), Castle 3.48 Kbps, SkypeLine 0.064 Kbps, Rook 0.024–0.04 Kbps.

DeltaShaper embeds covert TCP/IP data into Skype's encrypted video stream using a virtual camera interface, treating Skype as a black box rather than mimicking its protocol. This approach provides active-attack resistance by design: any in-path perturbation affects covert and legitimate streams identically, because real Skype software processes both. The system achieves a goodput of 2.56 Kbps (with Reed-Solomon ECC) or 3.12 Kbps (without ECC) at optimal encoding parameters (320x240 area, 8x8 cell size, 6 bits/cell, 1 fps), with RTT of approximately 3 seconds.

§4, §5, Table 2 defense

Packet-length frequency distributions reliably distinguish regular Skype calls from irregular streams using Earth Mover's Distance (EMD): regular streams consistently produce EMD < 0.1 against a reference stream, while irregular streams range from 0.025 to 0.25. At the breakeven threshold ∆I = 0.066, an EMD classifier achieves 83% accuracy (equal sensitivity and specificity). An aggressive policy (∆A) blocks 95% of legitimate calls to catch all irregular streams; a conservative policy (∆C = 0.11) passes 80% of irregular streams to avoid false positives.

§6.1, Figure 7 detection

Encoding parameters must be jointly tuned to remain unobservable: only specific combinations stay below the intermediate blocking threshold ∆I. Valid configurations at 1 fps include (160x120, 4x4) and (320x240, 8x8) areas/cell sizes; increasing frame rate above 1 fps pushes EMD above ∆ for all multi-bit encodings. As bits per cell increase, video compression introduces more decoding errors — error rates become unacceptable above 6 bits/cell for the (320x240, 8x8) configuration, yielding the candidate encoding: 320x240 area, 8x8 cells, 6 bits/cell, 1 fps.

§6.2, §6.3, Figures 9–12 evaluation

Across eight combinations of traffic features (packet length, bi-gram packet length, inter-packet time, bi-gram inter-packet time) and two similarity metrics (EMD, KS), adversarial classification accuracy against DeltaShaper streams ranges from 72–90% in unperturbed conditions. Bi-gram inter-packet times with EMD achieves 88% accuracy, matching packet-length/EMD, but requires roughly 10x the computation (~64s vs ~6s). Bandwidth throttling to 300 Kbps degrades classifier accuracy from 88% to 75%, but also drops Skype frame rate from 30 to 5 FPS, creating collateral damage that limits censor deployment of throttling as a detection aid.

§6.4, §6.5, Table 3 detection

A three-stage detection pipeline exploiting the "dual-role" behavioral fingerprint of single-IP circumvention relays achieved 23.2% recall (96/414 ground-truth relays) with a 0.18% false-positive rate against 97,651 benign TLS servers, for an overall accuracy of 99.5%. The ground-truth set covered OpenVPN, WireGuard, and SOCKS relays identified in a 17 TB single-day backbone trace (WIDE Project, April 9, 2025).

2026-almutairi-server §3.4, Table 1 traffic-shapedpiflow-correlation

The paper identifies a fundamental architectural vulnerability in single-IP circumvention designs: a relay must generate new observable flows (via DNS or TLS SNI) to reach end services after receiving client connections, creating a detectable server-and-client behavioral contrast. A relay accessing user-facing domains (news, social media) scores high on a Relay Suspicion Score (w=0.9) versus infrastructure domains (w=0.1). The paper argues this host-level signal is censorship-invariant and cannot be concealed by link obfuscation.

2026-almutairi-server §2.4, §4 traffic-shapedpisni-blocking

Simulations extending the ENEM19 game-theory framework show that ephemeral proxy schemes (modeled on Snowflake/Lantern) effectively neutralize both the "optimal" and "aggressive" censors from the original framework. In overprovisioned settings (proxies arriving at 250/step vs. 200 clients/step), even the null censor scenario outperforms either censor in equal-arrival settings. Over 90% of waiting users receive a proxy within 1 time step. The critical variable is not censor sophistication but proxy arrival rate relative to client demand—high proxy churn combined with high arrival rate defeats both enumeration strategies tested.

2026-fares-game §4, Fig 1, Fig 2, Table 1 dpitraffic-shape

The host-profiling censor (passive traffic analysis: count connections per server, block those exceeding a threshold τ within a window w) blocks essentially all circumvention user traffic within 30 time steps for all classifier qualities tested (ρ_TP ∈ {0.9, 0.95, 0.99}), while causing far less collateral damage than zig-zag (never exceeding ~30% innocent server blocking). Snowflake resists this attack well: with w=3, τ=3, over 94.48% of users receive a proxy within 2 steps even with worst-classifier rules, and final unblocked server rates are 91.24–99.04%. The host profiling approach is feasible for passive censors who cannot enumerate the distribution channel.

2026-fares-game §5.2, Table 2, Table 3 traffic-shapeml-classifier

Multi-censor simulations show that single-censor-optimized distribution strategies perform suboptimally in realistic multi-region deployments. When two networks have different censor strategies (e.g., one optimal, one zig-zag), the distributor cannot detect that a proxy is blocked until all censors have blocked it; this leaves clients without reachable proxies despite the proxy appearing "available" from the distributor's view. The authors conclude that "single-censor evaluation does not accurately predict more realistic deployment performance." A zig-zag censor in one region with 0.25 weight caused 44.4% collateral damage while reducing proxy lifetime to a median of 4 steps.

2026-fares-game §6, Table 4 traffic-shapeflow-correlation

The zig-zag traffic analysis attack (confirmed supported in Geedge TSG leak) rapidly enumerates all static proxy pools. With ζ_watch ∈ {4, 6} steps and a best-quality classifier (ρ_TP=0.99, ρ_FP=0.001), almost total proxy enumeration and user blockage occurs well before step 300. Even ζ_watch=2 leaves ~50% of users blocked. Collateral damage is high across all settings when ζ_watch ≥ 4: eventually ~50% of innocent servers are also blocked. However, Snowflake-style ephemeral proxies resist zig-zag effectively: reachability remains above 95% after 360 steps because churn prevents the censor from expanding its known proxy set beyond agents' direct assignments.

2026-fares-game §5.1, Fig 3, Fig 4 traffic-shapeflow-correlation