[HacktionLab] [FM Discuss] Press Release: Tunisian Activists Teach How To Bypass Internet Censorship

[Alan Dawson]

On Mon, Oct 03, 2011 at 11:18:21PM +0100, mick fuzz wrote:
> with reference to alan's email about non free tools, interestingly
> this is the only floss manuals with non free tools
> 
> the reason behind this is that it was felt that human rights trumped
> free software advocacy in the case of this particular book. a
> pragmatic decision to work around specific situations to do with
> circumvention needs.

Hi,
it wasn't just the use of non free tools, some of the proxy servers
in the book appeared to use plain text protocols to access web sites.
You may be able to get to a banned site, but an attacker would easily be able to 
tell that you are accessing it. I guess that this could be dangerous.

Additionally the recent state attacks ( that I'm aware of  ) against internet users are very sophisticated.

Example, 
The Tunisian state was altering facebook/gmail login pages

http://www.cpj.org/internet/2011/01/tunisia-invades-censors-facebook-other-accounts.php

Gmail has had a fake SSL attack

http://www.google.co.uk/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=2da6158b094b225a&hl=en

Blackberry Phones had a fake update by the UAE

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/168814/rim_uae_carriers_blackberry_update_was_spyware.html

Maybe we could start collating some tools that help defend ( or at least detect  ) these attacks too.

Regards,
Alan Dawson
-- 
GPG key: http://aland.burngreave.net/files/e81a4bba.gpg.pub.asc
Key Transition: http://aland.burngreave.net/files/keytransition.txt.asc
Further Reading: https://we.riseup.net/alster/openpgp-dsa1-key-rollover
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