AppSketch / AppSketch Works / App Sketch DB

Beyond VPN/circumvention tools, the same exported signature format is used at large scale for ordinary consumer apps — e.g. a Bank of Communications ('jiaotongyinhang') signature matches four exact-match DNS query names (download1.bankcomm.com, mobile.95559.com.cn, mbank.95559.com.cn, monitor.bankcomm.cn), and other entries (huolala, qidiandushu, zhihu) use the newer dns.qname/ssl.sni/http.host/quic.sni four-vector pattern per app. A companion artifact (70707a230d7d) is a flat list of thousands of specific URL paths (not just domains) spanning news, e-commerce, government-adjacent, and international press sites — consistent with the fqdn_category_list field seen in TSG's session-log schema, i.e. this is categorization/classification reference data, not solely a VPN blocklist.

Exported AppSketch/MAAT signature-object JSON shows named per-VPN detection rules combining multiple independent vectors: CyberGhost's WireGuard variant is matched by a hex UDP-payload pattern (04000000*), destination port 1337, and ip.proto=17 together (signature cyberghostvpn_wireguard); Windscribe's OpenVPN control channel is matched by two offset-anchored hex byte patterns plus an exact 86-byte payload length (windscribevpn_openvpn_payload); and ExpressVPN is matched independently via a literal JA3 hash (ssl.analysis.ja3), FQDN strings (expressapisv2.com, www.expressvpn.works), and a large enumerated IP list (700+ individual ip.dst entries observed before the 200KB text-extraction cutoff).

A dedicated AppSketch/MAAT signature object named 'Psiphon-Volunteer-IP' (signature_id 4054) blocklists specific IPv4/IPv6 CIDR ranges by ip.dst regardless of port (192.122.190.0/24, 2001:48a8:687f:1::/64, 141.219.0.0/16, and more), i.e. Geedge maintains infrastructure-level blocking of known Psiphon volunteer-hosted proxy server ranges rather than relying solely on app/protocol fingerprinting.

A signature object dated 2024-10-28 and named 'VPN servers in Russia' (fqdn variant signature_id 6217, IP variant 6216) blocklists specific FQDNs (api.tap2free.net, vpnlocal.app) and a companion IP-address object, showing Geedge curates geography-scoped VPN-infrastructure collections by country rather than only per-app-brand signatures — i.e. any server identified as VPN infrastructure hosted in a given country can be swept into a blocklist independent of which client app uses it.

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.

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.

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.

A MAAT/AppSketch signature literally named "Psiphon-Server-IP" blocks by destination IP against a list of 1,300+ IPs (the extracted text is truncated at ~200KB so the true list is likely larger, consistent with the taxonomy's cybernarrator/vpn-thwarting note of ~70-73K harvested Psiphon IPs), directly corroborating that the CyberNarrator/vpn-thwarting Psiphon3 IP-harvesting pipeline feeds its output straight into a production MAAT/AppSketch blocking signature.

MAAT/AppSketch signatures "turbovpn_udp_payload1"/"turbovpn_udp_payload2" detect Turbo VPN by matching a literal hex-encoded ASCII string in the UDP payload — keyword "$747572626f76706e0a00" decodes to the plaintext bytes "turbovpn\n\x00" — plus a second offset-anchored byte pattern, meaning Turbo VPN's own protocol handshake leaks a recognizable, unencrypted magic string that the DPI engine matches directly rather than needing any statistical or behavioral analysis.

MAAT/AppSketch signatures "hotspotvpn_ja3" and "ultrasurfvpn_update_behavior" identify Hotspot VPN and Ultrasurf specifically via static JA3 TLS ClientHello hashes (e.g. f49621211538d12435b8498f195d0c31 for Hotspot VPN; 706ea0b1920182287146b195ad4279a6 and 1f0d8bb4fab11dc335dec2e69da0c36e for Ultrasurf), in Ultrasurf's case combined with an AND-condition on a set of legitimate-looking cover domains (skype.com, msn.com, microsoft update domains) — showing the DPI engine defeats Ultrasurf's domain-mimicry cover by fingerprinting the underlying TLS stack instead of trusting the SNI/host.

The batch contains 200+ individual MAAT/AppSketch signature JSON files, most defining FQDN- and/or destination-IP-based blocking rules for a single named commercial/consumer VPN app each (LetsVPN, TurboVPN, QuarkVPN, PandaVPN, StarkVPNReloaded, VPNTurkey, BitdefenderVPN, SnapVPN, SuperSpeedVPNProxy, SuperUnlimitedVPN, CafeVPN, and dozens more), each carrying a build date — the dated files span June 2024 through November 2024 — showing a large, actively and continuously maintained per-app VPN signature catalog rather than a static blocklist.

A MAAT/AppSketch signature named "WARP on CF Edge" identifies Cloudflare WARP by matching destination IP against Cloudflare's published WARP anycast CIDR ranges (both IPv4, e.g. 162.159.192.0/24, and IPv6, e.g. 2606:4700:d0::/48) AND IP protocol UDP (ip.proto=17), while explicitly excluding destination port 443 (not_flag on a dstport=443 condition) — implying a separate rule is needed to catch WARP traffic that uses port 443.

A weekly operational report documents newly-added blocking rules for 25 mobile apps (18 hosted overseas, mostly on Hong Kong-region Azure/Alibaba/Tencent cloud IPs), where analysts extract each app's domains, IPs, and distinctive URL paths (e.g. '/tigase/getLastChatList', '/user/getUserMoney') and log 'system disposition: newly added blocking action' for every one; matching raw keyword-object exports using the identical URL-path style confirm these hand-extracted paths are loaded directly as live filter-list entries in production.

appsketch-works/app-test (and its fork app-test-fork) hold AppSketch signature definitions (signature.json/app.json/basic.json) for a broad app set spanning global platforms (TikTok, WeChat) and, notably, a Chinese provincial government app — 陕西社会保险 ("Shaanxi Social Insurance") — plus consumer apps (OPPO, Xiaomi, QQ, TIM, 义乌购/Yiwugou), showing AppSketch signature development covers domestic government/consumer apps, not only foreign circumvention-adjacent apps.

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.

The appsketch-works/device-api ("env-api") repo implements a REST/WebSocket-controlled Android device farm -- ADB shell control, droidVNC-NG remote display, APK install/run via Ansible-style "playbooks", and per-app-package tcpdump capture (with a dedicated fix to filter captured traffic by package name) -- matching the technical infrastructure implied by AppSketch Works' "Feature Factory" role of extracting app/VPN signatures from real device traffic.

AppSketch Works' asw-controller service (net.geedge.asw, 271 commits) implements a full automated signature-extraction pipeline: it tracks app source/releases via git (BranchController, MergeRequestController, ApplicationReleaseEntity), provisions remote/virtual Android 'Environment' instances with noVNC and terminal WebSocket access so a human operator can drive the app, captures the resulting traffic to pcap (PcapController, PcapParserThread), runs Playbook-scripted analysis integrated with Zeek and WebShark (ZeekClient, WebSharkClient), and produces versioned per-app DPI signatures (SignatureExtract.java, SignatureUtil.java -> ApplicationSignatureEntity).

appsketch-works/app-tiktok is a dedicated AppSketch Works repo containing a TikTok-specific app.json signature definition, directly corroborating the AppSketch "Feature Factory" product's per-app signature-authoring workflow documented elsewhere in the corpus, with TikTok confirmed as a named target app.

The AppSketch/MAAT signature system contains a systematically dated, patch-versioned catalog of FQDN-based detection signatures for dozens of individually named commercial VPN apps (e.g. V2VPN, V2Netvpn, Turbo VPN, LetsVPN, AdGuard VPN, Avira Phantom VPN, TouchVPN, FinchVPN, Opera VPN, Ultrasurf VPN, GoFly VPN), each modeled as an 'app' object in category 'networking' / subcategory 'tunnels' whose default deny_action drops the flow while sending both an ICMP-unreachable and a TCP RST to the client. At least 35 such distinct VPN-app signature objects appear in this batch alone, dated July-November 2024, with repeated 'Patch0N' revisions to the same app as its domains rotate.

Confirms the full licensed TSG component roster deployed at Ethiopia (E21): Firewall, Digital Observer, Email Retention, Statistics Policy, Proxy, Session Record, GTP Security, AppSketch, AppSketch Engine, AppSketch DB, WebSketch, WebSketch DB. Several license terms were extended to expire 2091-12-31, indicating a multi-decade commercial commitment.

An internal reference JSON enumerates known commercial VPN protocol/port/cipher combinations (L2TP:500 UDP, IKEv2 with remote-id "vpn.ipvanish.com", PPTP:1723, SSTP:443 AES-256-CBC, OpenVPN on 443/1194 UDP+TCP and additional non-standard ports like 8443, each with scramble-related fields for obfuscated variants) — functioning as a lookup table of known VPN-protocol fingerprints feeding signature development.

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.

A single AppSketch/MAAT-format signature bundle for "JumpJump VPN" (app_id 15172, characteristics "evasive,widely-used,tunnels-other-apps", deny_action method "drop") defines six independent detection surrogates: FQDN lists (including specific CloudFront distribution hostnames and *.cloudfront.net + a fixed 517-byte first-packet-length side channel), a hex-encoded HTTP tunnel payload signature, an HTTP "getNodes" API-path signature, and an HTTP/2-connection-preface byte pattern ("PRI * HTTP/2.0...SM") used to fingerprint the app's TLS-disguised tunnel.

A master AppSketch-format signature file mixes hundreds of domestic-app identification rules (iQiyi, JD.com, Tencent, Xiaomi Store, China Construction Bank, China Merchants Bank, Postal Savings Bank, Baidu Netdisk, government tax/medical portals) with foreign-VPN detection rules (BeePassVPN, BetternetVPN, BigMamaVPN, BravePrivateVPN, JumpJumpVPN, QuarkVPN, SecureVPN, VPNHero, VPNLite, VPNTurkey, etc.) inside the same rule framework and file, confirming VPN/ circumvention-tool detection is built on the identical general-purpose app-ID engine used for ordinary commercial app traffic classification, not a separate subsystem.

An internal risk memo, "Signal审查规避模式阻断风险说明" (Signal circumvention-mode blocking risk explanation), documents that after the operator pushed a "Deny Signal APP" policy, users with Signal's censorship-circumvention (domain fronting via Google infrastructure) enabled could still send messages/files; packet capture showed the fronted traffic used Google SNIs (clients3/4.google.com, inbox.google.com, android.clients.google.com, www.google.com), and the team built a targeted FQDN+JA3+payload signature specifically to block this fronted traffic while flagging a residual risk of false-positive blocking of legitimate Google services.

A TSG/sapp signature bundle dated 2024-06-17 defines a single 'Express VPN_Patch01' application (app_id 15190) matched by three independently OR'd signature layers -- an FQDN blocklist (expressvpn.com and ~7 domain variants), a destination-IP blocklist of roughly 150 addresses, and a raw UDP payload byte-pattern match anchored by offset/depth against ExpressVPN's Lightway protocol handshake bytes -- tied to an explicit enforcement action of dropping matched traffic.

A production TSG maat.conf shows the MAAT rule-matching engine running four parallel instances (STATIC, DYNAMIC, APP_SIGNATURE_MAAT, CAPTURE); the APP_SIGNATURE_MAAT instance is explicitly configured against app_sketch_tableinfo.conf / app_sketch_maat.json -- directly confirming MAAT is the execution engine underlying the AppSketch signature system -- and is tagged with an ACCEPT_TAGS datacenter value 'xjlhs', indicating this specific instance is scoped to a Xinjiang deployment.

Beyond ExpressVPN, TSG/sapp's signature pipeline maintains individually dated, continuously-updated detection rules (IP, FQDN, and in some cases WireGuard-specific payload signatures) for dozens of distinct named commercial VPN products spanning mid- through late-2024 -- including FlyVPN, VPNHero, RapidVPN, JourneyVPN, quarkVPN, AwardVPN, VPNLite, AdGuardVPN, WolfVPN, DelightVPN, VPNlat, VPNBrazil, NotVPN, VPNTurkey, jumpjumpVPN, BetternetVPN (with a dedicated WireGuard variant), TurboVPN, Psiphon 3, CyberGhost (WireGuard-specific), NordVPN, VPN Unlimited, and SuperUnlimitedVPN -- indicating a long-tail, actively-maintained blocklist covering niche/regional VPN apps, not just a handful of major providers.

'AppSketch Works' (internal Chinese name: 特征工厂, 'Feature Factory') is a formal, dedicated internal product -- not an ad hoc script -- for managing extraction, verification, and distribution of app/VPN blocking signatures ('APP Sketch DB') across all TSG deployments including export customers.

Geedge's MAAT/AppSketch signature system contains a dedicated, dated ruleset naming Lantern by product: signature_id 7312 "Lantern_fqdn_20241104" matches common.server_fqdn against the literal keyword "$lantern.io", and a companion signature_id 7240 "Lantern_ip_20241104" matches ip.dst against a static list of 1,604 individual IPv4 addresses, both dated 2024-11-04. The same signature file appears twice in the leak at two different artifact paths (identical content, not independent corroboration). Independent whois verification of all 1,604 IPs (not itself present in the leak document -- done by the extracting analyst against current registry data) found they collapse into only 38 distinct /16 ranges, of which ranges totaling 86.7% of the IPs return an explicit Oracle Corporation whois org record (netnames like OC-195, OC-260, ORACLE-4, ORACLE-MY, ORACLE-SE, OPC1); the remaining 13.3% are unattributed legacy RIPE/APNIC-ERX blocks with no other org found, consistent with the same historical-Oracle-lease pattern as the confirmed ranges. The individual IPs are a stale point-in-time snapshot given Lantern's IP rotation, but the provider concentration is the durable signal: this enumeration was effectively a sweep of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's address space, not a list of arbitrarily-located relays.

TSG's AppSketch app-detection engine accepts custom Lua scripts for new signatures, feeding a client/server-role heuristic (lower port = server) for UDP policy matching; a custom OpenVPN-detection Lua script failed to trigger Deny specifically because that role-inference logic misclassified the flow's client/server sides.

An internal research document systematically profiles the domain/IP infrastructure, WHOIS/registration data, and captured traffic characteristics of three remote-access/VPN tools (Sunlogin/向日葵, TeamViewer, and OpenVPN over both TCP and UDP) as raw material for building app-identification detection signatures, following the same intro / user-scale / traffic-feature-analysis / packet-capture-and-naming structure per app -- consistent with the methodology described for Geedge's AppSketch signature-extraction pipeline.

AppSketch Works' asw-runner (Java, net.geedge package) is a job-execution framework that drives target apps/VMs over VNC (VncClient.java), runs Ansible-style playbooks (PlaybookYml/RunnerYml), and captures/uploads pcap files plus job state -- the concrete automation harness behind AppSketch's app/VPN signature-extraction pipeline (drive an app in a VM, capture its traffic, upload for signature generation).

The 'appsketch-works' GitLab namespace hosts a Flask-based PCAP annotation service (pcap-comment, PcapNGFormatAnalys.py) used internally for labeling/commenting captured traffic -- supporting tooling for AppSketch Works' signature-engineering ground-truth workflow.

The appsketch-works/app-test-log repo's 1237-commit history is an operational log of AppSketch's signature pipeline, updating meta.json/signature.json for individually numbered, individually named apps (over 1400 by Nov 2024) spanning games, VPN/accelerator apps, banking, and government-services apps -- direct evidence of the scale and per-app cadence of Geedge's app-identification signature production.

An internal, '内部资料 注意保密'-classified architecture-group ('架构组') research report systematically profiles many third-party OA (office-collaboration) software products, extracting per-product app-identification features -- port-usage ranking, URL patterns, favicons, trademarks, page titles, HTML structure -- plus dedicated Android/Windows client packet-capture sections and a documented packet-data storage scheme, consistent with app-ID signature engineering (AppSketch-adjacent work) rather than the market-research framing of the report's own title.

TSG ships built-in BitTorrent detection apps in its "App Sketch DB" (v23.07). A 2023-08 field test found policies matched but did not block BT downloads; root cause was a UDP source/destination port ordering case (server port > client port) that let the real client IP land in the wrong field for the blocking policy to act on. Fixed via a second security policy rule.

TSG's app/protocol detection ("AppSketch" / context_based_detector plugin, part of the SAPP packet pipeline) is not purely static-signature: each detection rule can be an arbitrary Lua script (APP_SIG_LUA_SCRIPTS table) executed per-session in a per-worker-thread LuaJIT VM, with access to packet payload, session context counters, and helper functions (APP.data, APP.context.c2s_count, APP.log_debug, APP.append_extra_info). A validation CLI tool (luac-tool) checks script syntax, timeout, and return-value type before import.

Root-caused an Ethiopia SNI-block-failure incident to the detection mechanism itself: APP_SKETCH's FQDN-scanning module -- which exists specifically to identify Psiphon3 and Freegate via top-N SNI matching -- was CPU-expensive enough to saturate cores, triggering sapp's fail-open DDoS bypass and letting some target connections through uninspected. A signature-structure fix roughly doubled throughput (33K/s to 73K/s new connections) and disabling the fail-open bypass restored reliable blocking.

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).

Reveals internal architecture of TSG's traffic classification engine: the 'sapp' process (binary at /opt/tsg/sapp/sapp, version sapp-4.2.90) uses a packet-I/O layer called 'marsio', a custom app-identification plugin 'app_sketch_local' (identify_app_by_tcp_payload / identify_app_by_user_define_attributes), and an embedded LuaJIT ('libelua') for user-defined protocol signatures (e.g. custom Modbus detection) — concurrent LUA script loading crashes the classification worker.

TSG's App Sketch DB includes a "TachyonVPN" signature. A 2023-06 report found ordinary browsing to microsoft.com misclassified as TachyonVPN in security event logs; closed Nov 2024 with no confirmed fix.

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.

The same JSON signature-rule format used for VPN-app detection (signatureName / andConditions / orConditions, matched on http.host or ssl.sni) is used at production scale for ordinary domestic consumer apps as well — individual signature files observed for Kuaishou, Taobao, the digital-RMB wallet app ("数字人民币"), and WeWork — confirming a single, general-purpose app-identification pipeline (consistent with the taxonomy's AppSketch/MAAT description) covers both everyday commercial traffic and circumvention tooling under one signature format and production cadence.

An 11,266-line, apparently frequency-ranked domain list dominated by TikTok/ByteDance CDN domains (tiktokv.com, tiktokcdn.com, ibyteimg.com, etc.) also contains at least 11 VPN-provider domains interspersed (urban-vpn.com, nordvpn.com, avira-vpn.com, sofavpn.com, brightvpn.com, itopvpn.com, flashvpn, top10vpn.com, arpavpn.com, cnvpn001.com), consistent with a co-occurrence-derived FQDN classification/training list rather than a curated blocklist — i.e. domains commonly seen alongside TikTok sessions (plausibly because users pair TikTok with a VPN) feeding an app-ID signature or feature list.

The official TSG Administrator's Guide (customer-facing LaTeX source in tsg-manual/tsg-admin-guide, versioned releases through 2021) contains a dedicated 'Decryption' chapter and ships an 'AppSketch_Model' architecture diagram alongside chapters on Policies, Objects, and Monitoring -- confirming TLS interception and AppSketch-based app identification are documented, customer-configurable features of the exported TSG product rather than undisclosed internal-only capabilities.

Live TSG mirror-mode session logs (device_group XXG-TSG-BJ) show a granular, weekly-cadence app-classification chain for Turbo VPN — signatures dated TurboVPN_Patch01 through Patch08 (Sept 2024-Oct 2024) — with "Psiphon-Server"/"Psiphon Provider" recognized as an intermediate hop the classifier walks through before landing on "Turbo VPN", plus separate live detections of Proton VPN and "Super Unlimited VPN" (SuperUnlimitedVPN) in a second export from the same device group.

Eleven separate TSG session-log exports (all device_group XXG-TSG-BJ) each isolate one named commercial VPN app under a dated, patch-versioned signature and record security_action=Deny for every matched session: BeePass VPN, VPNHero, JumpJumpVPN, BigMamaVPN, AlohaBrowserLite, VPNMonster, QuarkVPN, SecureVPN, and BetternetVPN. This is live enforcement evidence (not passive mirroring) for at least nine distinct commercial VPN products, each individually fingerprinted and actively blocked.

Geedge's AppSketch/MAAT signature store contains a large, actively-maintained catalog of per-app FQDN+IP blocking signatures for dozens of named consumer VPN apps (StartVPN, DotVPN, VPNLite, BullVPN, RapidVPN, QuarkVPN, AdGuardVPN, BulletVPN, NotVPN, LetsVPN, PandaVPN, ACE VPN, BetternetVPN, HulaVPN, ThunderVPN, TurboVPN, and more, patch-dated across 2024), each tagged category='networking'/subcategory='tunnels' (or similar) with a deny_action of packet drop (sometimes with TCP RST), and some apps additionally flagged characteristics='evasive' with elevated risk scores; several apps' FQDN lists show the same domain-generation pattern (random word + .xyz/.info) later seen automated in a companion detection script.

Live TSG session logs from an internal test bed (device 21426003 / XXG-TSG-BJ) show active Deny actions firing against named commercial VPN apps -- Super Unlimited VPN, BetternetVPN, TouchVPN, LetsVPN -- via dated signature patches (e.g. BetternetVPN_Patch01_20240812 through Patch06_20240920, SuperUnlimitedVPN_Patch05 through Patch10 within six weeks), and LetsVPN's block fires on a JA3 TLS fingerprint (LetsVPN_by_ja3) even when the SNI/Host is spoofed to www.bytedance.com.

Beyond the Lantern-specific rules, this batch contains ~40 individually-dated JSON signature files from the same MAAT/AppSketch rule format, each targeting one named VPN/circumvention client by FQDN, destination IP, TLS JA3 hash, or certificate issuer: Signal, Orbot, Cloudflare WARP (including a MASQUE-specific variant combining an app_id classifier with an FQDN condition), ExpressVPN (matched by a literal JA3 hash plus a separate FQDN rule), ProtonVPN/ProtonMail, TurboVPN, QuarkVPN, LetsVPN, BetternetVPN, Browsec, GeckoVPN, HulaVPN, JumpJumpVPN, MouseVPN, NotVPN, SecureVPN, StarkVPNReloaded, SuperUnlimitedVPN, TowerVPN, TrustzoneVPN, USAVPN, VPNIndia/VPNLite/VPNPro/VPNTurkey, FlyVPN, ACE VPN, F1 Rockets VPN, and the Chinese gaming accelerator biubiu加速器. Dates cluster tightly (e.g. many on 2024-08-09, others 2024-09/10/11), indicating an active, continuously-updated per-app signature production pipeline rather than a static list.

A large set of individually-dated per-product signature files shows at least 31 distinct named commercial VPN apps under active, ongoing detection engineering (SecureVPN, LetsVPN, BetternetVPN, SuperUnlimitedVPN, TunnelBear, AtlasVPN, TurboVPN, UrbanVPN, GeckoVPN, VPNUnlimited, BitdefenderVPN, QuarkVPN, FlyVPN, HulaVPN, SurfVPN, BulletVPN, BeePassVPN, SnapVPN, WhitehatVPN, LunaVPN, SuperNetVPN, GitiVPN, CleanerAntivirusVPN, V2VPN/V2Netvpn, 7VPN, and country-branded VPNIndia/VPNCanada/VPNIndonesia/VPNKorea apps), each with multiple detection vectors per app (destination-IP ranges, FQDN, DNS QNAME, TLS cert issuer, JA3, WireGuard-protocol matching, ISAKMP/IKE matching, raw TCP payload); one file shows the resulting policy rule object wired directly to an explicit deny action.

Across dozens of individual signature-rule JSON files in this batch, at least 40 distinct named commercial VPN products carry dedicated detection signatures (by IP src/dst, FQDN, JA3 hash, or protocol-specific payload): BeePassVPN, BetternetVPN (separate isakmp/ja3/WireGuard sub- signatures), BigMamaVPN, BravePrivateVPN, ExpressVPN (JA3 + UDP-payload variants), FlyVPN, hidemevpn (OpenVPN UDP payload), JourneyVPN, JumpjumpVPN, LetsVPN (JA3), Psiphon3 ("psiphon3vpn_serverip"), QuarkVPN, SecureVPN, SuperUnlimitedVPN, TurboVPN, VPNHero, VPNTurkey, and others, each dated/versioned (e.g. "_20240812") indicating an ongoing signature-maintenance pipeline rather than a one-off ruleset.

Dozens of near-identical MAAT/AppSketch-style signature-definition files in this batch each target one named commercial VPN app/service (ProtonVPN, HotSpot VPN, SuperUnlimitedVPN, jumpjumpVPN, BetternetVPN, NotVPN, VPNLite, SymlexVPN, etc.), matched via FQDN suffix, destination IP list, and/or TLS JA3 hash. The same "SuperUnlimitedVPN" signature recurs with new signature_ids/dates roughly monthly (2024-06, -09, -10, -11), showing this is a continuously-maintained, actively-updated VPN-detection pipeline rather than a one-off snapshot.

Leaked per-app JSON signature-rule exports show the detection engine layers multiple independent signals per VPN product: Windscribe VPN is matched via fixed-offset hex-byte keywords inside the OpenVPN UDP handshake payload (offset 73/depth 78 and offset 81/depth 85); "Super Unlimited VPN" (the SuperUnlimitedVPN app) gets three parallel signatures — a JA3 TLS-fingerprint match, an FQDN match, and an OpenVPN c2s-payload-prefix/length match; Hide.me VPN is matched on OpenVPN UDP payload; FastVPN is matched purely by known source/destination IP; and "V2VPN" (Google Play com.v2ray.v2vpn, a V2Ray-based VPN app) has its own dedicated signature — evidencing a deliberately layered (protocol-fingerprint + TLS-fingerprint + FQDN + IP) detection strategy per circumvention product.

A production Python pipeline queries the TSG session-log ClickHouse database roughly every 5 minutes for sessions matching either a fixed set of VPN-associated TCP ports (18000, 3320, 8099) or a domain-generation heuristic (FQDN = 10-14 lowercase letters + '.xyz' or '.info' TLD, hosted on Cloudflare IP ranges 104.21.0.0/16 or 172.67.0.0/16), and automatically inserts newly-observed matching IPs/FQDNs into the live 'VPNLite_ip'/'VPNLite_fqdn' blocking objects via a config-management API, with no human review step.

A single AppSketch/MAAT signature bundle for Windscribe VPN fuses four independent detection techniques in production: an OpenVPN-handshake payload signature (fixed hex bytes at a specific byte offset/depth plus an exact packet-length check), a TLS certificate subject_organization_name match on the literal string 'Windscribe', a JA3 TLS-ClientHello fingerprint hash, and DNS query-name matching against 100+ individually enumerated obfuscation/CDN-rotation domains (windscribe.com plus many totallyacdn.com and whiskergalaxy.com hostnames).

An internal methodology memo for the '新疆省口项目' (Xinjiang provincial-gateway project) and '联通IDC项目' (Unicom IDC project) states both rely on 现有的系统（TSG与CN） (the existing TSG and CN [CyberNarrator] systems) to Block/Monitor/identify mainstream apps, and describes a largely manual signature-engineering workflow -- download the target app, capture traffic with 科莱(Colasoft Capsa)/Wireshark, extract fingerprint fields (http.host, http.user_agent, quic.sni, ssl.handshake.extensions_server_name) by hand, and register a per-app signature -- extending CyberNarrator's documented role beyond Psiphon-IP-harvesting/Pakistan subscriber correlation into general domestic app-blocking alongside TSG.