Lantern – Open Internet for Everyone
getlantern.org
getlantern.org
Lantern is a free peer-to-peer internet censorship circumvention software. It provides a way to bypass state-sanctioned filtration through a network of trusted users, but it's not an anonymity tool like Tor. Using Lantern, users in countries having free internet access can share their bandwidth with those who are in countries where the network is partly blocked. Network connections will be dispersed between multiple computers running Lantern so it will not put undue stress on a single connection or computer.
> Lantern is not an anonymity tool. Lantern was built for fast and open Internet access. If you feel you need to be anonymous online (if you are posting something you think could bring legal action against you, for example) we recommend using Tor. Otherwise, Lantern will give you faster access to blocked sites.
But that's a distinct issue from unregulated uplink sharing.
With regard to states wishing to suppress this sort of activity, I do have concerns that a behavioral signature will emerge that will be fairly telling... I suspect it may not be difficult to crack down on users. Nonetheless, the concept has potential for many reasons.
[1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lantern-one-device-free-d...
I will leave my GP comment here in case people find the other project interesting; but they do appear to be unrelated. Thanks for clearing that up :D
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The concept sounds quite insecure but apparently it only allows HTTPS connections so it's delegating encryption to that instead of doing it itself.
http://getlantern.github.io/Beating_GFW_With_Go/
The main idea is "domain fronting": hiding proxy traffic inside connections to regular websites.
The actual application is https://github.com/getlantern/flashlight, the proxy library is https://github.com/getlantern/enproxy.
I should probably uninstall this.
On the minus side, observer at the Great Firewall can probably learn a lot about Lantern users, unless the Lantern software is really careful.
It's better to use a system that can actually help to protect your anonymity.
1) Download size
2) Speed
Beyond that, though, the vast majority of users are also simply not engaging in activity online that will realistically put them in danger. Users in censored regions are really like users anywhere else in that respect -- they are not doing illegal things online that would make them targets.
On the DPI front, every major censor definitely uses DPI in an effort to block tools like Lantern.
That said, Tor is great at what it does, and we strongly support the Tor team and their work and collaborate with them whenever we can.
Edit: In Give Access mode, what other users get access? Is that limited to those specified via Google Talk?
>Beyond that, though, the vast majority of users are also simply not engaging in activity online that will realistically put them in danger.
This seems like a difficult claim to make - isn't bypassing the censors itself a risky activity? I guess it depends on the specific government, but people getting beaten or killed for what they've written isn't unheard of.
I'd just worry they might get lulled into thinking if they're getting around the censors that means they can't be tracked - when in the case of Lantern the opposite might be true (they might be getting more attention).
Good luck with the project though - I think it's a really important problem to be hacking on.
While it's great that this is open source, I don't see how I have any guarantee that the public source code is actually what's running on the server I connect to.