Secure Obfuscated and Encrypted Web Browsing for Iranians

For those, particularly Iranians, who wish to browse the web safely, Haystack may be a good solution.

Haystack is not an ordinary proxy system. It employs a sophisticated mathematical formula to hide users' real Internet traffic inside a continuous stream of innocuous-looking requests. In addition to providing anonymity, Haystack uses strong cryptography, ensuring that even if users' traffic is detected, it cannot be read. Trying to find and decipher our users' traffic amidst all the other traffic on the web really is like trying to find a needle in the proverbial Haystack.

Once installed Haystack will provide completely uncensored access to the internet from Iran while simultaneously protecting the user's identity. No more Facebook blocks, no more government warning pages when you try to load Twitter or access news sites -- just unfiltered Internet.

...Not that Facebook is how you should be spending your time online.

VPN Solutions

Previously we mentioned OpenVPN, a solid VPN solution. Hamachi by Logmein.com is a VPN solution which uses UDP, non error correcting protocol wrapping an encryped TCP connection. This creates a large efficiency gain over other VPNs which wrap error correcting encrypted TCP protocol inside of error correcting TCP packets. From our testing, Hamachi was able to maximise our bandwidth of 2.8 MB/s without processor strain, while the best performance we received through OpenVPN was 600KB/s.

Unlike OpenVPN which is very difficult to set up, Hamachi sets up in about a minute and requires a virtual LAN name password. In this way your computer starts VPN connections as easily as one might join a chat room and you become connected not just to one machine, but every machine that has been authorised on that virtual LAN and whom the user has authorised. Included in the client is also an IP to IP non-recording encrypted chat mechanism.

Hamachi is freemium software and is actively developed. Here is a great podcast explaining the intelligent design of Hamachi.

Hamachi is the Japanese word for Yellow Fin Tuna.

Off The Record

Pidgin, Trillian and Adium are great IM softwares. Off The Record is a plugin for those programmes which enables encrypted communications with Perfect Forward Secrecy using standard clients such as Google Talk, ICQ, AIM etc.

Trillian now has an iPhone version. It is very important that an OTR application, or similar technology, is developed for mobile platforms like iPhone and Android so that people might have secure mobile communication.

*UPDATE: It recently came to our attention that Pidgin Saved Passwords are saved in plain text in an obvious location. Thus, anyone gaining access to the user's filesystem can obtain all their IM passwords, including their Google Account if they use it for Google Talk. This is a major security vulnerability. Be aware!

OpenVPN

We highly recommend the Open Source OpenVPN software. It is not necessarily a comprehensive VPN package, and as far as we can see is not compatible with other VPN products such as the convenient VPN client built into Windows, but it is nonetheless a free and effective way for one to create a secure highly encrypted software based tunnel between many locations. It works for any major OS. The major drawback is that the install and setup is not trivial. To create an OpenVPN server you must know something about command-line, config files, and something about the basics of computer networking. Once established, it allows for extremely fast encrypted connections with the potential to max out one's bandwidth capacity with a normal processor. With such levels of security, imagine the possibilities...

Nuclear Disarmament

Disarmament does not lead to peace. Disarmament is a consequence of peace.

                                               - Stephen Schuker, 2002

Nuclear Disarmament should be seen as a sign of tremendous human progress. The Twentieth Century saw mankind reach for the bomb and with it the power of life and death over all complex life on the planet. The threat now of Environmental Destruction from pollution or biological weapons manufacture pales in comparison to the nuclear button. Nuclear armament has been the first existential threat humanity has faced in all recorded history. It surely will not be the last. This threat has not been nor probably will it ever be completely eliminated. Nevertheless, the current push towards global reduction of arms reflects increasing world peace and security.

Google Security Vulnerabilities

To access anything in a person's Google account, all one must know is email address and password. For someone who has either a well placed key recorder, or knows their victim personally, or happens to just access a person's machine after they have used it - a tremendous amount of information is thence available to an attacker. An author of this blog has been the victim of the third type of attack from a trusted loved one whose temptation to delve into personal information, like a sailor to the Sirens, was too great.

The third type of attack is perhaps unavoidable from a technical perspective and is the responsibility of the user to avoid, but the other types of attacks could be better avoided with an option for a paid security token and perhaps more regular security questions.

Although security for an average user is very important, it is perhaps even more valuable to businesses. Twitter, which the authors of this blog find an annoying fad, recently had some private corporate documents stolen and published as a result of a Google account being compromised. In the end, Google's online suite of tools are simply too useful not to use despite the vulnerabilities, and the potential for a government sub poena - nonetheless caveat emptor. Let this be a lesson to us all - and to Google especially.

Digital Currency Trading Declared Illegal in China

Virtual Currencies threaten the power of governments by weakening their grip over the medium of exchange - ie Fiat Currency. In that sense, it is not surprising to see one of the more Authoritarian States definitively cracking down on Virtual Currency exchange. In practise, this will lessen the booming virtual currencies business and put many Chinese "gold farmers" out of work, but generally drive the digital currency market to ever higher levels of sophistication and security.

We have touched on this issue before.

An exposition on the topic of secure digital currencies can be found in David Friedman's Future Imperfect.

We suspect that the collapse of the value of the private US Federal Reserve Dollar will spark a real push for legalisation of competing Commodity backed digital currencies.