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The team behind secure messaging app Signal says Amazon has threatened to drop the app if it doesn't stop using an anti-censorship practice known as domain-fronting. Google recently banned the practice, which lets developers disguise web traffic to look like it's coming from a different source, allowing apps like Signal to evade country-level bans. As a result, Signal moved from Google to the Amazon-owned Souq content delivery network. But Amazon implemented its own ban on Friday. In an email that Moxie Marlinspike — founder of Signal developer Open Whisper Systems — posted today, Amazon orders the organization to immediately stop using domain-fronting or find another web services provider.
Amazon has said that it's banning domain-fronting so malware purveyors can't disguise themselves as innocent web traffic. But Signal used the system to provide service in Egypt, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where it's officially banned. It got around filters by making traffic appear to come from a huge platform, since countries weren't willing to ban the entirety of a site like Google to shut down Signal.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17308508/amazon-web-services-signal-domain-fronting-ban-response
Also at TechCrunch and TechRepublic.
See also: A Google update just created a big problem for anti-censorship tools
APT29 Domain Fronting With TOR
Previously: Encrypted Messaging App Signal Uses Google to Bypass Censorship
Related: Open Whisper Systems Releases Standalone "Signal" Desktop App
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday May 02 2018, @11:53PM
Let me try to give an illustration to this. For two weeks already Russian government has been engaged in an all out Internet war against Telegram. The law requires Telegram to submit keys that Telegram obviously does not have. I guess they refused to build a backdoor so the department of communications or whatever it is called decided to stop it. The results? Telegram works, but many services, such as major banks and retail networks, were blocked in the process. At some point the department responsible for blocking Telegram blocked itself; yes, I've seen it down myself..
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.