Blocking-Resistant Communication Through Domain Fronting
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PVC Technical Specifications V.1.0
Pryvate™ Ltd. Functional & Technical Specifications PVC Technical Specifications V.1.0 APRIL 10, 2018 © PRYVATE™ 2018. PRYVATE™ is a suite of security products from Criptyque Ltd. Registered in the Cayman Islands. PRYVATE™ Is a brand wholly owned by CRIPTYQUE Ltd. Pryvate™ Ltd. Functional & Technical Specifications TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 GENERAL INFORMATION 5 1.1 Scope 1.2 Current Platform Summary 2 FUNCTIONAL TECH SPECIFICATIONS 5 2.1 Encrypted Voice Calls (VOIP) 2.2 Off Net Calling 2.3 Secure Conferencing 2.4 Encrypted Video Calls 2.5 Encrypted Instant Message (IM) 2.6 Notification of Screenshots 2.7 Encrypted Email 2.8 Secure File Transfer & Storage 2.9 Pin-Encrypted Mobile Protection 2.10 Multiple Account Management 2.11 Secure managed conversations 2.12 Anti-Blocking 3 HYBRIDIZATION 13 3.1 Voice / Video / Messaging 3.2 File Storage / Archival 3.3 Pryvate Crypto Wallet 3.3.1 Two-Wallet Solution 3.3.2 Three Methods 3.3.3 Enterprise Multi - by Pryvate 3.3.4 Risks of Cryptocurrency Wallets 3.4 Decentralized Email 3.5 Pryvate Dashboard 4 PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS 20 4.1 System Maintenance 4.2 Failure Contingencies 4.3 Customization and Flexibility 4.4 Equipment 4.5 Software 4.6 Interface / UI 5 CONCLUSION 21 6 APPENDIX 22 © PRYVATE™ 2018. PRYVATE™ is a suite of security products from Criptyque Ltd. Registered in the Cayman Islands. PRYVATE™ Is a brand wholly owned by CRIPTYQUE Ltd. Pryvate™ Ltd. Functional & Technical Specifications Acronyms: Definitions SCP = Secure Communications Platform Crypto= Cryptocurrency IPFS= Interplanetary File System ZRTP= ("Z" is a reference to its inventor, Zimmermann; "RTP" stands for Real-time Transport Protocol) it is a cryptographic key-agreement protocol to negotiate the keys for encryption between two end points in a Voice over Internet Protocol Diffie-Hellman= A method of securely exchanging cryptographic keys over a public channel and was one of the first public-key protocols as originally conceptualized by Ralph Merkle and named after Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman. -
Poster: Introducing Massbrowser: a Censorship Circumvention System Run by the Masses
Poster: Introducing MassBrowser: A Censorship Circumvention System Run by the Masses Milad Nasr∗, Anonymous∗, and Amir Houmansadr University of Massachusetts Amherst fmilad,[email protected] ∗Equal contribution Abstract—We will present a new censorship circumvention sys- side the censorship regions, which relay the Internet traffic tem, currently being developed in our group. The new system of the censored users. This includes systems like Tor, VPNs, is called MassBrowser, and combines several techniques from Psiphon, etc. Unfortunately, such circumvention systems are state-of-the-art censorship studies to design a hard-to-block, easily blocked by the censors by enumerating their limited practical censorship circumvention system. MassBrowser is a set of proxy server IP addresses [14]. (2) Costly to operate: one-hop proxy system where the proxies are volunteer Internet To resist proxy blocking by the censors, recent circumven- users in the free world. The power of MassBrowser comes from tion systems have started to deploy the proxies on shared-IP the large number of volunteer proxies who frequently change platforms such as CDNs, App Engines, and Cloud Storage, their IP addresses as the volunteer users move to different a technique broadly referred to as domain fronting [3]. networks. To get a large number of volunteer proxies, we This mechanism, however, is prohibitively expensive [11] provide the volunteers the control over how their computers to operate for large scales of users. (3) Poor QoS: Proxy- are used by the censored users. Particularly, the volunteer based circumvention systems like Tor and it’s variants suffer users can decide what websites they will proxy for censored from low quality of service (e.g., high latencies and low users, and how much bandwidth they will allocate. -
Threat Modeling and Circumvention of Internet Censorship
Threat modeling and circumvention of Internet censorship David Fifield September 27, 2017 Abstract Research on Internet censorship is hampered by a lack of adequate models of censor behavior, encompassing both censors' current practice and their likely future evolution. Censor models guide the development of circumvention systems, so it is important to get them right. A censor model should be understood not only as a set of capabilities| such as the ability to monitor network traffic—but also as a set of priorities constrained by resource limitations. A circumvention system designed under inadequate assumptions runs the risk of being either easily blocked, or impractical to deploy. My thesis research will be concerned with developing empirically informed censor models and practical, effective circumvention systems to counter them. My goal is to move the field away from seeing the censorship problem as a cat-and-mouse game that affords only incre- mental and temporary advancements. We should instead state the hypotheses and assumptions under which our circumvention designs will work|with the designs being more or less practical depending on how well the hypotheses and assumptions match the behavior of real-world censors. 1 Thesis My research is about Internet censorship and how to make it ineffective. To this end, I am interested in building useful models of real-world censors as they exist today and may exist in the future, for the purpose of building circumvention systems that are not only sound in theory but also effective in practice. 1 2 Scope Internet censorship is an enormous topic. My thesis research is concerned with one important case of it: the border firewall. -
Internet Censorship and Resistance May 15, 2009 1 / 32 Historical Censorship
INTERNET CENSORSHIP AND RESISTANCE Joseph Bonneau [email protected] (thanks to Steven Murdoch) Computer Laboratory Gates Scholars' Symposium 2010 Joseph Bonneau (University of Cambridge) Internet Censorship and Resistance May 15, 2009 1 / 32 Historical Censorship He who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four, 1949 Joseph Bonneau (University of Cambridge) Internet Censorship and Resistance May 15, 2009 2 / 32 Historical Censorship He who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four, 1949 Joseph Bonneau (University of Cambridge) Internet Censorship and Resistance May 15, 2009 2 / 32 Information as a Human Right Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expres- sion; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without inter- ference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. —Article 19, UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948) Joseph Bonneau (University of Cambridge) Internet Censorship and Resistance May 15, 2009 3 / 32 Information as a Human Right The final freedom, one that was probably inherent in what both President and Mrs. Roosevelt thought about and wrote about all those years ago, ... is the freedom to connect—the idea that governments should not prevent people from con- necting to the internet, to websites, or to each other... a new information curtain is descending across much of the world. —Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State (2010) Joseph Bonneau (University of Cambridge) Internet Censorship and Resistance May 15, 2009 3 / 32 The Internet Dream The Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it. -
OSS: Using Online Scanning Services for Censorship Circumvention
OSS: Using Online Scanning Services for Censorship Circumvention David Fifield1, Gabi Nakibly2, and Dan Boneh1 1 Computer Science Department, Stanford University 2 National EW Research & Simulation Center, Rafael { Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. Abstract. We introduce the concept of a web-based online scanning service, or OSS for short, and show that these OSSes can be covertly used as proxies in a censorship circumvention system. Such proxies are suitable both for short one-time rendezvous messages and bulk bidirectional data transport. We show that OSSes are widely available on the Internet and blocking all of them can be difficult and harmful. We measure the number of round trips and the amount of data that can be pushed through various OSSes and show that we can achieve throughputs of about 100 KB/sec. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach we built a system for censored users to communicate with blocked Tor relays using available OSS providers. We report on its design and performance. 1 Introduction Nowadays many nations regularly filter Internet traffic by blocking news sites, social networking sites, search sites, and even public mail sites like Gmail. The OpenNet Initiative, which tracks public reports of Internet filtering, lists a large number of countries that filter Internet traffic. Over half of the 74 countries tested in 2011 imposed some degree of filtering on the Internet [1]. In response, several proxy systems have emerged to help censored users freely browse the Internet. Most notable among these is Tor [2], which, while originally designed to provide anonymity, has also seen wide use in circumvention. -
Everyone's Guide to Bypassing Internet Censorship
EVERYONE’S GUIDE TO BY-PASSING INTERNET CENSORSHIP FOR CITIZENS WORLDWIDE A CIVISEC PROJECT The Citizen Lab The University of Toronto September, 2007 cover illustration by Jane Gowan Glossary page 4 Introduction page 5 Choosing Circumvention page 8 User self-assessment Provider self-assessment Technology page 17 Web-based Circumvention Systems Tunneling Software Anonymous Communications Systems Tricks of the trade page 28 Things to remember page 29 Further reading page 29 Circumvention Technologies Circumvention technologies are any tools, software, or methods used to bypass Inter- net filtering. These can range from complex computer programs to relatively simple manual steps, such as accessing a banned website stored on a search engine’s cache, instead of trying to access it directly. Circumvention Providers Circumvention providers install software on a computer in a non-filtered location and make connections to this computer available to those who access the Internet from a censored location. Circumvention providers can range from large commercial organi- zations offering circumvention services for a fee to individuals providing circumven- tion services for free. Circumvention Users Circumvention users are individuals who use circumvention technologies to bypass Internet content filtering. 4 Internet censorship, or content filtering, has become a major global problem. Whereas once it was assumed that states could not control Internet communications, according to research by the OpenNet Initiative (http://opennet.net) more than 25 countries now engage in Internet censorship practices. Those with the most pervasive filtering policies have been found to routinely block access to human rights organi- zations, news, blogs, and web services that challenge the status quo or are deemed threatening or undesirable. -
Shedding Light on Mobile App Store Censorship
Shedding Light on Mobile App Store Censorship Vasilis Ververis Marios Isaakidis Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany University College London, London, UK [email protected] [email protected] Valentin Weber Benjamin Fabian Centre for Technology and Global Affairs University of Telecommunications Leipzig (HfTL) University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This paper studies the availability of apps and app stores across app stores, censorship, country availability, mobile applications, countries. Our research finds that users in specific countries do China, Russia not have access to popular app stores due to local laws, financial reasons, or because countries are on a sanctions list that prohibit ACM Reference Format: Vasilis Ververis, Marios Isaakidis, Valentin Weber, and Benjamin Fabian. foreign businesses to operate within its jurisdiction. Furthermore, 2019. Shedding Light on Mobile App Store Censorship. In 27th Conference this paper presents a novel methodology for querying the public on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization Adjunct (UMAP’19 Ad- search engines and APIs of major app stores (Google Play Store, junct), June 9–12, 2019, Larnaca, Cyprus. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. Apple App Store, Tencent MyApp Store) that is cross-verified by https://doi.org/10.1145/3314183.3324965 network measurements. This allows us to investigate which apps are available in which country. We primarily focused on the avail- ability of VPN apps in Russia and China. Our results show that 1 INTRODUCTION despite both countries having restrictive VPN laws, there are still The widespread adoption of smartphones over the past decade saw many VPN apps available in Russia and only a handful in China. -
Psiphon User Guide
PSIPHON USER GUIDE Psiphon is a free and open source web proxy that helps internet users bypass content-filtering systems used by governments in countries like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam. It was developed by the Citizen Lab's CiviSec Project at the University of Toronto and was first released in December 2006. In this how to guide, learn how to provide a proxy service to someone behind a firewall with psiphon . If you are behind a firewall and want to learn how to connect to psiphon and access blocked content, check out this how to guide . Psiphon, unlike other circumvention services, is not intended to be a public, open proxy service. It’s based on a “web of trust” system so psiphon nodes are harder to block. What this means is that a person in an unrestricted location (one that is not behind a firewall) provides a psiphon proxy service to a person they are familiar with who is going online in a place where online access is limited. This is known as a psiphonode . A psiphonite is a psiphon user living in a censored country. The psiphonite connects to a psiphonode (set up by someone they know and trust) to access information freely. NOTE: Psiphon only works on Windows and Linux. There is no Mac version yet. Step 1. First, you should be in a location where you have open access to the internet. You should know someone in another location where access is limited. You will be providing a psiphonode for this person. Tip! If you do not know any psiphon users, but still want to provide a psiphonode, you can find users on psiphon’s Facebook page or Twitter page. -
Threat Modeling and Circumvention of Internet Censorship by David Fifield
Threat modeling and circumvention of Internet censorship By David Fifield A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor J.D. Tygar, Chair Professor Deirdre Mulligan Professor Vern Paxson Fall 2017 1 Abstract Threat modeling and circumvention of Internet censorship by David Fifield Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science University of California, Berkeley Professor J.D. Tygar, Chair Research on Internet censorship is hampered by poor models of censor behavior. Censor models guide the development of circumvention systems, so it is important to get them right. A censor model should be understood not just as a set of capabilities|such as the ability to monitor network traffic—but as a set of priorities constrained by resource limitations. My research addresses the twin themes of modeling and circumvention. With a grounding in empirical research, I build up an abstract model of the circumvention problem and examine how to adapt it to concrete censorship challenges. I describe the results of experiments on censors that probe their strengths and weaknesses; specifically, on the subject of active probing to discover proxy servers, and on delays in their reaction to changes in circumvention. I present two circumvention designs: domain fronting, which derives its resistance to blocking from the censor's reluctance to block other useful services; and Snowflake, based on quickly changing peer-to-peer proxy servers. I hope to change the perception that the circumvention problem is a cat-and-mouse game that affords only incremental and temporary advancements. -
Blockchain: an Enabler for Power Market Operations Exploring Potential Uses of Distributed Ledger Technology in the Evolving Georgian Power Market
BLOCKCHAIN: AN ENABLER FOR POWER MARKET OPERATIONS EXPLORING POTENTIAL USES OF DISTRIBUTED LEDGER TECHNOLOGY IN THE EVOLVING GEORGIAN POWER MARKET USAID GOVERNING FOR GROWTH (G4G) IN GEORGIA 30 May 2019 This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by Deloitte Consulting LLP. The author’s views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. BLOCKCHAIN: AN ENABLER FOR POWER MARKET OPERATIONS EXPLORING POTENTIAL USES OF DISTRIBUTED LEDGER TECHNOLOGY IN THE EVOLVING GEORGIAN POWER MARKET USAID GOVERNING FOR GROWTH (G4G) IN GEORGIA CONTRACT NUMBER: AID-114-C-14-00007 DELOITTE CONSULTING LLP USAID | GEORGIA USAID CONTRACTING OFFICER’S REPRESENTATIVE: PHILLIP GREENE AUTHOR(S): SRI SEKAR, JAMES CALLIHAN, AVTANDILI TODUA ACTIVITY AREA: 4420 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 30 MAY 2019 DISCLAIMER: This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by Deloitte Consulting LLP. The author’s views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. USAID | GOVERNING FOR GROWTH (G4G) IN GEORGIA BLOCKCHAIN: AN ENABLER FOR POWER MARKET OPERATIONS i DATA Reviewed by: Giorgi Giorgobiani, Andrea Lora Project Component: Energy Trade Policy Improvement Component Practice Area: Electricity Trading Mechanism (ETM) Key Words: Blockchain, -
A Framework for Identifying Host-Based Artifacts in Dark Web Investigations
Dakota State University Beadle Scholar Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations Fall 11-2020 A Framework for Identifying Host-based Artifacts in Dark Web Investigations Arica Kulm Dakota State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.dsu.edu/theses Part of the Databases and Information Systems Commons, Information Security Commons, and the Systems Architecture Commons Recommended Citation Kulm, Arica, "A Framework for Identifying Host-based Artifacts in Dark Web Investigations" (2020). Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations. 357. https://scholar.dsu.edu/theses/357 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Beadle Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Beadle Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A FRAMEWORK FOR IDENTIFYING HOST-BASED ARTIFACTS IN DARK WEB INVESTIGATIONS A dissertation submitted to Dakota State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cyber Defense November 2020 By Arica Kulm Dissertation Committee: Dr. Ashley Podhradsky Dr. Kevin Streff Dr. Omar El-Gayar Cynthia Hetherington Trevor Jones ii DISSERTATION APPROVAL FORM This dissertation is approved as a credible and independent investigation by a candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy in Cyber Defense degree and is acceptable for meeting the dissertation requirements for this degree. Acceptance of this dissertation does not imply that the conclusions reached by the candidate are necessarily the conclusions of the major department or university. Student Name: Arica Kulm Dissertation Title: A Framework for Identifying Host-based Artifacts in Dark Web Investigations Dissertation Chair: Date: 11/12/20 Committee member: Date: 11/12/2020 Committee member: Date: Committee member: Date: Committee member: Date: iii ACKNOWLEDGMENT First, I would like to thank Dr. -
Style Counsel: Seeing the (Random) Forest for the Trees in Adversarial Code Stylometry∗
Style Counsel: Seeing the (Random) Forest for the Trees in Adversarial Code Stylometry∗ Christopher McKnight Ian Goldberg Magnet Forensics University of Waterloo [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT worm based on an examination of the reverse-engineered code [17], The results of recent experiments have suggested that code stylom- casting style analysis as a forensic technique. etry can successfully identify the author of short programs from This technique, however, may be used to chill speech for soft- among hundreds of candidates with up to 98% precision. This poten- ware developers. There are several cases of developers being treated tial ability to discern the programmer of a code sample from a large as individuals of suspicion, intimidated by authorities and/or co- group of possible authors could have concerning consequences for erced into removing their software from the Internet. In the US, the open-source community at large, particularly those contrib- Nadim Kobeissi, the Canadian creator of Cryptocat (an online se- utors that may wish to remain anonymous. Recent international cure messaging application) was stopped, searched, and questioned events have suggested the developers of certain anti-censorship by Department of Homeland Security officials on four separate oc- and anti-surveillance tools are being targeted by their governments casions in 2012 about Cryptocat and the algorithms it employs [16]. and forced to delete their repositories or face prosecution. In November 2014, Chinese developer Xu Dong was arrested, pri- In light of this threat to the freedom and privacy of individual marily for political tweets, but also because he allegedly “committed programmers around the world, we devised a tool, Style Counsel, to crimes of developing software to help Chinese Internet users scale aid programmers in obfuscating their inherent style and imitating the Great Fire Wall of China” [4] in relation to proxy software he another, overt, author’s style in order to protect their anonymity wrote.