Psiphon is a web proxy In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server evaluates the request according to designed to help Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and users securely bypass the content-filtering systems used to censor the internet Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. The legal issues are similar to offline censorship by governments in places like China, North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Pakistan and others. Psiphon was developed by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated north of the city's Financial District on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by Royal Charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in the colony of Upper Canada. Originally controlled by the Church of, building upon previous generations of web proxy software systems, such as the "SafeWeb Norton Safe Search , is a service developed by Symantec Corporation, designed to help users discern safe Web sites from unsafe ones. Safe Web is integrated with Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton 360 version 3.0. It requires Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 2" [1] and "Anonymizer An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable. It accesses the Internet on the user's behalf, protecting personal information by hiding the source computer's identifying information" systems.
In 2008 Psiphon was spun off as a Canadian corporation that continues to develop advanced censorship circumvention systems and technologies. Psiphon maintains its research and development lab and computer network "red team" at The Citizen Lab, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto.
There are currently two branches of Psiphon development: psiphon open source, and a commercial version that includes the managed proxy cloud and proprietary anti-counter circumvention system.
Psiphon open-source's recommended use is among private, trusted relationships that span censored and uncensored locations (such as those that exist among friends and family members, for example) rather than as an open public proxy. Traffic between clients and servers in the Psiphon system is encrypted using the https protocol. Released under the GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project, Psiphon open-source is free software Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and that manufacturers of consumer-.
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History and functionality
Psiphon open source is an internet proxy, described as "... a censorship circumvention solution that allows users to access blocked sites in countries where the Internet is censored" such as Iran Iran (Persian: ایران [ʔiˈɾɒn] ), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and formerly known as Persia, is a country in Central Eurasia and Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was widely known as Persia. Both Persia and Iran are. The psiphon software "...turns a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server capable of retrieving and displaying web pages anywhere."[2] Psiphon was originally implemented in Python Python is a general-purpose high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python aims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive. Its use of indentation for block delimiters is unusual among popular programming languages, but has been re-designed and re-written in C++, and designed as a cross-platform In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms. Cross-platform software may be divided into two types; one requires individual building or compilation for each platform that it supports, and the (Windows and Linux versions are currently available), user friendly In design, usability is the study of the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. This can include endeavors as varied as consumer electronics, communication, and knowledge transfer objects and mechanical objects such as a door handles or a hammer proxy server In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server evaluates the request according to tool which uses a https Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with the SSL/TLS protocol to provide encryption and secure (website security testing) identification of the server. It uses port 443. HTTPS connections are often used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web and for sensitive transactions in corporate protocol to transfer data. With a user name and password, people in countries that use Internet content filtering can send encrypted requests for information to a trusted computer located in another country and receive encrypted information in return. As https protocol is widely used for secure communication over the Internet (from web mail to Internet banking Online banking allows customers to conduct financial transactions on a secure website operated by their retail or virtual bank, credit union or building society), no government can block https traffic without further restricting its citizens' ability to use the web, something that has not dissuaded these governments' Internet censorship efforts thus far.
According to Nart Villeneuve, Chief Technology Officer of Psiphon inc, "The idea is to get them to install this on their computer, and then deliver the location of that circumventor, to people in filtered countries by the means they know to be the most secure. What we're trying to build is a network of trust among people who know each other, rather than a large tech network that people can just tap into."[3]
Psiphon takes a substantially different approach to censorship circumvention than other tools used for such purposes, such as The Onion Router aka Tor. Psiphon requires no download on the client side, and thus offers ease-of-use for the end user. But unlike Tor, psiphon is not an anonymizer, as the server logs all of the clients surfing history. Psiphon differs from previous approaches in that the users themselves have access to server software. The developers of Psiphon have provided the user with a Microsoft Windows platform executable for the Psiphon server. If the server software attains a high level of use this would result in a greater number of servers being online. A great number of servers online would make the task of attacking the overall user base more difficult for those hostile to use of the psiphon proxy than attacking a few centralized servers, because each individual web proxy would have to be disabled one by one.
Screenshot showing Psiphon in use from the client (psiphonite) side, as viewed in Internet Explorer. The IP address has been changed.In the most recent edition of the software, the psiphonode pings the Citizen Lab to “check in” and returns your public IP, which is then distributed to users. Although this does create the theoretical danger of a canonical list of psiphonodes which could be a target for an adversary determined to block psiphon, the Citizen Lab does not archive this information as a matter of policy. Additionally, users have the option to configure their psiphonodes not to "check in" with the Citizen Lab.
Through the psiphon control panel, psiphonode administrators have access to a log of sites that their psiphonites access, which makes the psiphon user subject to the consequences of any lack of good security practices, ill will, or possible censorship by the psiphonenode administrator. The authors of psiphon stress that these issues are "trust" issues, with exception of poor security practices, and should not present a problem because of the positive social relationship(s) between psiphon user(s) and psiphonode administrator(s). The theory being that if there is a good enough relationship to establish a psiphon user to psiphonode administrator tie, issues such as psiphonode censorship and ill will are not likely to arise, hence the term "social networks of trust" used in psiphon literature.[2]
Psiphon open source software was funded by the Open Society Institute The Open Society Institute , a private operating and grantmaking foundation, aims to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform. On a local level, OSI implements a range of initiatives to support the rule of law, education, public health, and independent media. At the same time, OSI and was released under the GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project (GPL) on 1 December 2006.
In 2008, Psiphon was spun out of the Citizen Lab and established as a Canadian corporation. It has since received investments and contracts from a number of sources including the European Union, Broadcast Board of Governors (US), US Department of State and the British Broadcasting Corporation. The CEO of Psiphon inc is Rafal Rohozinski, who is also a principal investigator with the OpenNet Initiative The OpenNet Initiative is a joint project whose goal is to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. The project employs a number of technical means, as well as an international network of investigators, to determine the extent and nature of government-run internet filtering programs. Participating academic and Infowar Monitor.
Psiphon inc develops advanced content delivery and censorship circumvention solutions and software. The system now includes a managed network solution for large-scale customers, as well as a proprietary anti-counter circumvention system. Psiphon inc is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, and maintains research and development laboratories at the Citizen Lab.
Theoretical problems - Psiphon open source version 1.6
In order to increase the ease which a psiphon open source server can be implemented, the latest version of psiphon has an IP address ping back service, with each new server pinging the Citizen Lab server in Toronto Canada.
- The Citizen Lab server then responds to the ping by transmitting the numerical IP address of the new psiphon server back in plain text, directly to the new psiphon server.
- This provides easy reference for the novice psiphon server administrator, who then distributes the IP address to those who need to use psiphon.
- The "ping back" behavior is presently a default, but need not be chosen, the option to not ping is present in the psiphon server software.[4]
- This problem is fixable, as it is possible for each request to be answered back with 100 DNS requests for websites that are generally considered harmless or too obscure to bother with. However, it would be cheaper in bandwidth and CPU time to just use 40 bit crypto to transfer the applicable DNS information.
There are inherent security risks in approaches such as psiphon, specifically those presented by logging by the services themselves.[5] The real world risks of log keeping was illustrated by the turn over of the e-mails of Li Zhi Li Zhi was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in December 2003 in the People's Republic of China for trying to join the China Democratic Party, which is a banned organization in communist China, and for criticizing corruption. It is alleged that part of the evidence against him, namely details of his e-mail account, was provided by the Hong to the Chinese Government by Yahoo. Li was subsequently arrested, convicted and sent to jail for 8 years.[6] Some have raised concerns that the IP addresses and the psiphon software download logs of psiphon users could fall into the wrong hands if the Citizen Lab computers were to get hacked or otherwise compromised.
A limitation in Psiphon is that users are unable to browse websites through TSL Transport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Socket Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols that provide security for communications over networks such as the Internet. TLS and SSL encrypt the segments of network connections at the Transport Layer end-to-end/SSL Transport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Socket Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols that provide security for communications over networks such as the Internet. TLS and SSL encrypt the segments of network connections at the Transport Layer end-to-end connections. Although not a security threat, this reduces the ability of users to preserve their privacy.
Psiphon and data retention
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| — Michael Hull, psiphon's lead engineer[7] |
The United Kingdom, Denmark and some other European countries have data retention policies. Under these policies Internet Service Providers are obliged to retain a record of all their clients' web browsing habits. The data retention period varies from six months to three years. In the UK this retained data is available to a very wide range of public bodies, including the police and security services. Anyone who operates a psiphonode in one of these countries needs to be aware that a record is kept of all web browsing through their computers. On 15 March 2006 the European Union adopted Directive 2006/24/EC which requires all member states to introduce statutory data retention. The United States of America does not have a statutory data retention regime, though such a provision is under discussion. Such records as are retained by Internet Service Providers or web sites may be obtained by Federal authorities, without judicial oversight, using a National Security Letter A National Security Letter is a form of administrative subpoena used by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and reportedly by other U.S. Government Agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense. It is a demand letter issued to a particular entity or organization to turn over various record and data.[citation needed]
See also
- Freedom of information Freedom of information refers to the protection of the right to freedom of expression with regards to the Internet and information technology (see also, digital rights). Freedom of information may also concern censorship in an information technology context, i.e. the ability to access Web content, without censorship or restrictions
- GNUnet GNUnet is a free software framework for decentralized, peer-to-peer networking. The framework offers link encryption, peer discovery and resource allocation
- Hacktivism Hacktivism is "the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends. These tools include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft, web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, virtual sabotage, and software development." It is often understood as the writing of code to
- Internet censorship Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. The legal issues are similar to offline censorship
- OpenNet Initiative The OpenNet Initiative is a joint project whose goal is to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. The project employs a number of technical means, as well as an international network of investigators, to determine the extent and nature of government-run internet filtering programs. Participating academic
- Infowar Monitor
- Ronald Deibert
- Rafal Rohozinski
- The Six/Four System Hacktivismo is an offshoot of CULT OF THE DEAD COW , whose beliefs include access to information as a basic human right. It was founded in 1999
- Tor (anonymity network) Tor is a free software descendent of second-generation onion routing enabling Internet anonymity by thwarting network traffic analysis. The current project never uses all caps for the name Tor, and does not consider it to be an abbreviation
References
- ^ SafeWeb's Holes Contradict Claims
- ^ a b Psiphon Frequently Asked Questions
- ^ Boyd, Clark (2004-03-10). "Bypassing China's net firewall". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3548035.stm. Retrieved 2007-03-28.
- ^ Psiphon Guide
- ^ Clarke, Ian; Scott G. Miller, Theodore W. Hong, Oskar Sandberg, Brandon Wiley (January/February 2002). "Protecting Free Expression Online with Freenet". IEEE Internet Computing 6 (1): 40–49. doi A digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an electronic document or other object. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata:10.1109/4236.978368. http://csdl2.computer.org/persagen/DLAbsToc.jsp?resourcePath=/dl/mags/ic/&toc=comp/mags/ic/2002/01/w1toc.xml&DOI=10.1109/4236.978368.
- ^ Lemon, Sumner (2006-02-09). "Yahoo may have helped jail another Chinese user". InfoWorld. http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/02/09/75208_HNyahoohelpedjail_1.html.
- ^ "Tool to circumvent internet censorship set to launch". CBC News Online. 2006-12-01. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/12/01/censor-tool.html.
External links
- Psiphon Official Homepage
- Psiphon Official User Guide
- CBC The Hour - December 4, 2006
- BBC: Web censorship 'bypass' unveiled
- Canada.com: Canadian software touted as answer to Internet censorship abroad
- CNN: Experts find path around Internet firewalls
- Computerworld: Liberation software designed on basis of trust
- Globe and Mail: Scaling the walls of Web censorship
- Reuters: Canada experts find path round Internet firewalls
- CNN International: psiphon interview with Dr. Ron Deibert
- Interview with Ronald Deibert from the Psiphon project on YouTube
- Al Jazeera's Listening Post story about psiphon on YouTube
- Index on Censorship - Psiphon wins Economist New Media award at Freedom of Expression awards 2009
Categories: Free network-related software This is a category of articles relating to software which can be freely used, copied, studied, modified, and redistributed by everyone that obtains a copy: "free software" or "open source software". Typically, this means software which is distributed with a free software license, and whose source code is available to anyone who | University of Toronto | Internet censorship Categories: Internet culture | Censorship | Computer law
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one email address or many one address per line After a click on Invite you get the message 1 invitations queued which means that the node sends out the emails in the next minutes Report a blocked website
Jon
hu, 22 Jul 2010 17:48:11 GM
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: | | Mobile Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use . Psiphon. from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
Q. I am living in Iran where the sites r filtered. Does any body know a software that I can pass all the filtered sites??
Asked by John - Mon Dec 4 05:17:40 2006 - - 1 Answers - 0 Comments
A. psiphon is designed to bypass internet censorship like in your country, basically you need someone in an uncensored country to install the software, once they have installed psiphon, they will give you their external IP address, a username and a password. type the IP address in your browser address bar and log on. you will not be able to browse if the host computer is offline, if you dont have the IP, PW and username. psiphon is not installed on your computer. once you log out, delete history.
Answered by mrfire_eater2 - Mon Dec 4 09:43:34 2006
