Darknets
Thursday, 16. February 2006, 04:21:16
By now, every geek has heard of darknets of one level sort or another. It always comes up regarding P2P, and the people who insist on using bittorrent for illegial content (which, btw, is stupid as it advertises who you are and what you have moreso than many other possibilities).
I'm not really interested in talking about how to P2P, but I am interested in talking about how to have somewhat tracking/spy resistant communications. Especially in the US, with the latest suggestions about tracking the entire web to try and create "terrorist" heuristics. It seems that at least for the near future, the US is going to continue handing the terrorists victories through abridging civil liberties and spying on its own people any way they can. So this seems a timely topic.
We all know I use proxomitron - that goes a long way towards taming the wider internet. But it does nothing to hide the slow/not changing identifier - my IP address. There are several solutions, with varying degrees of cost and difficulty. Probably everyone knows about cgi proxies - often the fastest and cheapest method to hide from the sites you browse. Another, faster choice is services like Anonymizer.com, but you have to pay there. Either of these is sufficient to foil tracking by sites you visit as long as you aren't logging in (which makes the whole practice mostly moot, unless you are trying to build an online psudopersona), assuming that you are already using something like proxomitron to sanitize the web.
1
A better, and free choice that gets lots of press now adays thanks to the EFF is TOR. It not only is sufficient to hide you from the sites, but provides some level of survelliance resistance as well. Of course, it's not perfect, as everyone who cares knows what's a TOR outproxy (Onion Router in their terms) and so will know you're hiding from them. Also, the content is in clear text till it hits TOR, so there's various things that can be done at that level as well - that is, the content provider is still sticking out their neck however you slice it, and the nice person running an outproxy may be as well. And TORs a pain as it's a SOCKS proxy, so you have to chain in privoxy or use socks cap or some crap to get it to work. I really fail to understand quite why TOR is a SOCKS proxy, as it seems they only want to carry web traffic (see the official request not to use P2P/bittorrent over TOR).
2
Next down the line is the venerable Freenet - which is so secure and anonymous - you mostly can't get anything over it. I find that much of the time, the flagship sites listed on the console are unreachable. However, if they ever sort this out (and their glacial update procedures) they will likely be the best for anonymous information distribution. It doesn't do any outproxying, every piece of content in in-network, and the data transferring is designed to thwart traffic analysis as well as maintain data for some time even after the originator of the data goes off net. Currently, you need to devote much of a machine to it, as well as many days for it to get integrated into the net. Also, you do have to store data on your machine, and forward that data. You don't get to choose (or know) what data is on your PC.
3
One that has become my current favorite, and is less well known is I2P. What's interesting is that it's more of a real time netork like TOR, with internal sites and services using cryptographic IDs. So you really don't know who you're talking to, and the data going out takes a different route than the data coming back. It supports anon IRC, E-Mail, Sites, Blogs, and in-network Bittorrent. If you're going to use bittorent, you ought to run it over I2P in network, where it's welcomed, rather than pushing it over TOR where they are trying to block it. Instead of stupid mixed encryption schemes for different clients, just use I2Ps built in bittorrent, Azureaus with the plugin, or write a plugin for the client of choice. This would solve both the current traffic shaping issue, but also some of the anonyminity problems.
Even cooler with I2P is it has outproxies to the web, and freenet, and tor. So you can get that 24/7 freenet connection fast, without running it on your PC. The downside is no file downloads - sites only, no frost etc. The upside? You can see the sites pretty quickly.
4
A final choice, which I reject for several reasons, is the build your own darknet like the rumored MetaNet (which seems to have existed, and may still exist) and it's decendant, anoNet.
The pros to anoNet is it's a full VPN, implemented with OpenVPN. That's basically it.
The major cons are as follows: You have to setup and implement a VPN connection, and you need to then get on IRC in-network, connect with someone (or skip that, and have someone invite you) to become a full peer and be able to use most network services. Then you have to set up OSPF or BGP routing on your node.
Once you get all that done, you have a shadow internet. How cool, right? Well, not really cause you just have all the issues of the internet in a supposedly hidden net. How are you anonymous? Well, it depends on your routing, but inside the network, everyone has a pretty much static IP that you could trace back to. etc...
Final Point
Anyway, right now, I'd look at what I want to do, and keep an eye on I2P and TOR. Freenet still has a lot of promise, but the big issue is it's performance. Maybe 0.7 will do something to fix that.
I'm not really interested in talking about how to P2P, but I am interested in talking about how to have somewhat tracking/spy resistant communications. Especially in the US, with the latest suggestions about tracking the entire web to try and create "terrorist" heuristics. It seems that at least for the near future, the US is going to continue handing the terrorists victories through abridging civil liberties and spying on its own people any way they can. So this seems a timely topic.
We all know I use proxomitron - that goes a long way towards taming the wider internet. But it does nothing to hide the slow/not changing identifier - my IP address. There are several solutions, with varying degrees of cost and difficulty. Probably everyone knows about cgi proxies - often the fastest and cheapest method to hide from the sites you browse. Another, faster choice is services like Anonymizer.com, but you have to pay there. Either of these is sufficient to foil tracking by sites you visit as long as you aren't logging in (which makes the whole practice mostly moot, unless you are trying to build an online psudopersona), assuming that you are already using something like proxomitron to sanitize the web.
1
A better, and free choice that gets lots of press now adays thanks to the EFF is TOR. It not only is sufficient to hide you from the sites, but provides some level of survelliance resistance as well. Of course, it's not perfect, as everyone who cares knows what's a TOR outproxy (Onion Router in their terms) and so will know you're hiding from them. Also, the content is in clear text till it hits TOR, so there's various things that can be done at that level as well - that is, the content provider is still sticking out their neck however you slice it, and the nice person running an outproxy may be as well. And TORs a pain as it's a SOCKS proxy, so you have to chain in privoxy or use socks cap or some crap to get it to work. I really fail to understand quite why TOR is a SOCKS proxy, as it seems they only want to carry web traffic (see the official request not to use P2P/bittorrent over TOR).
2
Next down the line is the venerable Freenet - which is so secure and anonymous - you mostly can't get anything over it. I find that much of the time, the flagship sites listed on the console are unreachable. However, if they ever sort this out (and their glacial update procedures) they will likely be the best for anonymous information distribution. It doesn't do any outproxying, every piece of content in in-network, and the data transferring is designed to thwart traffic analysis as well as maintain data for some time even after the originator of the data goes off net. Currently, you need to devote much of a machine to it, as well as many days for it to get integrated into the net. Also, you do have to store data on your machine, and forward that data. You don't get to choose (or know) what data is on your PC.
3
One that has become my current favorite, and is less well known is I2P. What's interesting is that it's more of a real time netork like TOR, with internal sites and services using cryptographic IDs. So you really don't know who you're talking to, and the data going out takes a different route than the data coming back. It supports anon IRC, E-Mail, Sites, Blogs, and in-network Bittorrent. If you're going to use bittorent, you ought to run it over I2P in network, where it's welcomed, rather than pushing it over TOR where they are trying to block it. Instead of stupid mixed encryption schemes for different clients, just use I2Ps built in bittorrent, Azureaus with the plugin, or write a plugin for the client of choice. This would solve both the current traffic shaping issue, but also some of the anonyminity problems.
Even cooler with I2P is it has outproxies to the web, and freenet, and tor. So you can get that 24/7 freenet connection fast, without running it on your PC. The downside is no file downloads - sites only, no frost etc. The upside? You can see the sites pretty quickly.
4
A final choice, which I reject for several reasons, is the build your own darknet like the rumored MetaNet (which seems to have existed, and may still exist) and it's decendant, anoNet.
The pros to anoNet is it's a full VPN, implemented with OpenVPN. That's basically it.
The major cons are as follows: You have to setup and implement a VPN connection, and you need to then get on IRC in-network, connect with someone (or skip that, and have someone invite you) to become a full peer and be able to use most network services. Then you have to set up OSPF or BGP routing on your node.
Once you get all that done, you have a shadow internet. How cool, right? Well, not really cause you just have all the issues of the internet in a supposedly hidden net. How are you anonymous? Well, it depends on your routing, but inside the network, everyone has a pretty much static IP that you could trace back to. etc...
Final Point
Anyway, right now, I'd look at what I want to do, and keep an eye on I2P and TOR. Freenet still has a lot of promise, but the big issue is it's performance. Maybe 0.7 will do something to fix that.
WIDGETIZE