geedge.lantern.io
deployment confidence: high public

A recurring weekly '[Xinjiang Unicom/Xinjiang Mobile] Traffic Analysis Report' (新疆联通/移动流量分析报告), produced by a 'Carrier Front-End Analysis Team' (运营商前端分析团队), spans Feb-Jul 2023 in this batch. It reports each carrier's total/access bandwidth (Xinjiang Unicom: 1.88 Tbps total, 880 Gbps access; Xinjiang Mobile: 4.4 Tbps total, 1 Tbps access) and per-app server-IP/location/traffic breakdowns for 31 named foreign platforms including Telegram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Snapchat, Gmail and YouTube, alongside domestic-app sections — direct evidence of an ongoing, carrier-integrated domestic monitoring program for China's Xinjiang region.

新疆联通总带宽为1.88Tbps,接入带宽880Gbps。
censorscn
productstsgappsketch
capabilitydeployment-config

extracted_by: claude-sonnet-5 · added 2026-08-26 · id: 2026-ae-xinjiang-carrier-weekly-reports

Related findings

detection

TSG's app-traffic classification relies on an updatable "App Sketch DB" component (uploaded as a versioned file to each deployment). A version bump at the Xinjiang Unicom province-exit + IDC site increased identified application-traffic share from 23% to 68% of total traffic within days, with ByteDance-attributed traffic alone rising from ~100TB/day to ~500TB/day identified, illustrating both the scale of traffic under classification and that classification itself is a frequently-updated, centrally-distributed database rather than a static build-time artifact.

deployment

Side-by-side internal performance comparison across Xinjiang (China Mobile carrier deployment, hostname cmcc-xj-server1-sapp-244), Fujian (domestic), and Ethiopia (E21) explicitly references the same 'app_sketch_maat' diagnostic log format at all three sites, confirming the identical AppSketch app-fingerprinting stack is used for domestic Xinjiang surveillance and for the exported Ethiopia deployment.

detection

Extensive engineering effort to extend TSG's built-in 'APP Sketch DB' fingerprint database with signatures for major domestic Chinese apps (Douyin, Kuaishou, Mango TV, JD, Tencent Cloud, etc.), primarily via SSL SNI matching, with iterative per-feature test/fail/patch cycles against specific in-app actions (e.g. certain Douyin menu items stayed unblocked after the main signature succeeded).

detection

TSG's DPI signature engine is organized around named internal components confirmed by config paths and error logs: SAPP (installed at /home/mesasoft/sapp_run or /opt/tsg/sapp), MAAT (config at .../tsgconf/maat.conf, tied to a Redis-backed APP_SIG_SESSION_ATTRIBUTE_STRING table), and App-SketchDB (a versioned, centrally-maintained app-identification signature database pulled periodically by field deployments). One deployment's provincial gateway alone had 1,667 TCP/UDP first-packet payload signature entries active (396 at the IDC site), confirming payload-prefix matching as a live, large-scale detection method, including custom byte-prefix entries for DingTalk and WeChat.

detection

Live TSG session logs from an internal test/QA gateway (device_id 9800165603191146 / 21426003, data_center label XXG-TSG-BJ) show real sessions from named commercial VPN apps — AlohaBrowserLite, BeePassVPN, BravePrivateVPN (WireGuard), Proton VPN, Turbo VPN, CyberGhost, BetternetVPN, SuperUnlimitedVPN, TrustzoneVPN and VPNHero — each matched to a dedicated per-app security rule (e.g. Deny_Brave, Deny_BeePassvpn, deny_Super Unlimited VPN) and given security_action=Deny. One row's app_transition field records a layered classification chain 'Psiphon Provider' -> ... -> 'BravePrivateVPN' for a single session, indicating the engine attempts nested/tunnel-in-tunnel protocol identification, not just single-label app ID.

export/sales

A Sentinel HASP software-license XML file names "CEIEC" as the licensed organization (type "Evaluation"), with the license's embedded HASP feature blob (v2c field) containing readable product-SKU strings "TSG-Web-Sketch-DB- Subscription", "TSG-App-Sketch-DB-Subscription", "TSG-App-Sketch-Engine", "TSG-App-Sketch", "TSG-WANNAT", "TSG-Proxy", and "TSG-CM" — direct primary- source evidence of a CEIEC-licensed TSG deployment naming the specific licensed product modules. This does not by itself identify which end customer/country CEIEC was reselling to for this particular license.