Iran protests: TOR, anyone?
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- Iran protesters, determined to share accounts of the demonstrations that have continued since the disputed elections two weeks ago, are using an encryption app originally developed by, and for, the US Navy.
US Navy, eh? Must be whizz-bang.
But anyone online who’s concerned about preserving personal security will have heard about it. Literally years ago.
It’s The Onion Router or, simply, TOR, an open source application people use to surf anonymously.
“Designed a decade ago to secure Internet communications between U.S. ships at sea, The Onion Router, or TOR, has become one of the most important proxies in Iran for gaining access to Web sites,” says the Washington Times, going on:
“The system of proxy servers that disguise a user’s Internet traffic is now operated by a nonprofit, the Tor Project, that is independent from the U.S. government and military and is used all over the world.
“According to the Tor Project, connections to TOR have gone up by 600 percent since mass protests erupted after the June 12 vote, which gave a purported landslide victory to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
Says the TOR site:
“The Onion Routing program is made up of projects researching, designing, building, and analyzing anonymous communications systems. The focus is on practical systems for low-latency Internet-based connections that resist traffic analysis, eavesdropping, and other attacks both by outsiders (e.g. Internet routers) and insiders (Onion Routing servers themselves). Onion Routing prevents the transport medium from knowing who is communicating with whom — the network knows only that communication is taking place. In addition, the content of the communication is hidden from eavesdroppers up to the point where the traffic leaves the OR network.”
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Washington Times – Iranian protesters avoid censorship with Navy technology, June 26, 2009
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June 29th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
And here is the site for Iranians: http://www.torir.org/
June 29th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Tor is now faster since the more users the faster it goes. Thanks to their Iranian governement.
(If we can call this a governement!)
June 29th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
“And here is the site for Iranians: http://www.torir.org/”
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
CAREFUL! WITH THIS “SITE FOR IRANIANS!”
IT COULD BE A SITE SETUP BY THE IRANIAN GOVERNEMENT!
IT DOES NOT SEEM TO BE A FARSI VERSION OF TOR YET!
GO TO THE OFFICIAL SITE FOR TOR INSTEAD:
http://www.torproject.org/easy-download.html.en
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
This should be investigated to make sure torir.org is legitimate!
This domain name as just be registered from Sweden June 19!
June 29th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
WARNING! with toir.org! This might be a trap!
This domain name is newly registered by soemeone in Sweden
WARNING!
June 29th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
There is a legitimate Farsii Version of Tor at:
http://www.torproject.org/index.html.fa
Use this site instead of the possibly suspicious torir.org!
June 29th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Torir.org points to iran.whyweprotest.net, which is set up by Anonymous who protested against Scientology.
And the site above is also accessible via the onion address at http://lxkghnyg2owy6scd.onion/proxy
They ask that non-Iranians do not use the onion as the bandwidth of that interface is limited.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
LimeWire is also helping Iranian protesters, see http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-1097.html