Summary by @cohosh from CensorLess: Cost-Efficient Censorship Circumvention Through Serverless Cloud Functions (PETS 2026) · Issue #652 · net4people/bbs · GitHub.
CensorLess: Cost-Efficient Censorship Circumvention Through Serverless Cloud Functions
Authors: Dayeon Kang, Jade Sheffey, Mingshi Wu, Pubali Datta, Amir Houmansadr
https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.php
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CensorLess is a cloud-based circumvention system that uses serverless computing, also called FaaS) to run ultra lightweight HTTP proxies. It is offered as a successor to SpotProxy, with simpler deployment and migration, and lower estimated costs.
The client runs a local proxy, the concept of which is similar to how a Tor PT client process works. The CensorLess local proxy repackages requests as HTTP requests to an initial proxy URL that is obtained out of band. The local proxy then passes HTTP responses back to the client application.
This local proxy also watches for migration tags that indicate a change to the proxy URL. This is distinct from IP rotation, which happens automatically by the cloud provider, without the need to change the URL. The system can function as either a HTTP proxy, or in private mode as a HTTPS tunnel. It is possible to use domain fronting techniques with AWS Lambda, one FaaS provider, with some interesting properties: the client can use a different front for each HTTP request, and the fronts do not have to be valid URLs, they just need to match the permitted cloud domain pattern.