Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Saturday August 25 2018, @11:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the catch-me-if-you-can dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4408

The encrypted chat app is partnering with a circumvention service.

As encrypted chat apps grow more popular, they’re also becoming more popular targets for state-level blocks. Whether it’s brief interruptions in Brazil and Egypt or long-term censorship in China and Iran, countries are testing out their ability to block traffic at a national level, and apps are having to get creative to stay online.

Wickr’s latest solution is a partnership with the circumvention service Psiphon, which will be available to enterprise users starting today and rolling out to free users in the weeks to come. Similar to a VPN, Psiphon will disguise Wickr traffic through proxies and other routing protocols designed to make the traffic hard to spot and even harder to block.

Emerging from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, Psiphon already provides anti-blocking services for a number of digital rights tools, most notably in Iran. “The systems doing network disruptions are very sophisticated,” says Psiphon’s Michael Hull. “So you have to have a smarter kind of VPN to perform under the various kinds of filters and attacks.”

That’s a particularly valuable service now that it’s harder to hide your traffic among larger networks. In recent months, both Amazon and Google have disallowed a practice called domain-fronting, which allowed apps like Wickr to forward their traffic through the larger network as a way of evading censorship. Botnets also sometimes used the technique to avoid detection, which ultimately inspired the broader networks to shut down the practice.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/23/17770384/wickr-psiphon-partnership-internet-censorship


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Touché) by jelizondo on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:39PM (1 child)

    by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:39PM (#726324) Journal

    All oppressors lie about people they had detained. “Never heard of him” “We don’t have him, so we can’t free him”

    Liars, liars, liars.

    FREE ARISTARCHUS!

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Touché=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Touché' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @09:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @09:04PM (#726351)

    Free AIDS! Apply within.