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After 3 Years, Freenet 0.7 Released
Posted by
timothy
on Thu May 08, 2008 03:02 PM
from the layers-on-layers dept.
from the layers-on-layers dept.
evanbd writes "After over 3 years of work, the Freenet Project has announced the release of Freenet 0.7. 'Freenet is software designed to allow the free exchange of information over the Internet without fear of censorship, or reprisal. To achieve this Freenet makes it very difficult for adversaries to reveal the identity, either of the person publishing, or downloading content' ... 'The journey towards Freenet 0.7 began in 2005 with the realization that some of Freenet's most vulnerable users needed to hide the fact that they were using Freenet, not just what they were doing with it. The result of this realization was a ground-up redesign and rewrite of Freenet, adding a "darknet" capability, allowing users to limit who their Freenet software would communicate with to trusted friends.'"
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Technology: Freenet Version 0.7 Release Candidate 1 Available 232 comments
apostle5406 writes to mention that the "Freenet" project (a global peer-to-peer publishing network) has unveiled their first release candidate. "Freenet 0.7 is a ground-up rewrite of Freenet. The key user-facing feature in Freenet 0.7 is the ability to operate Freenet in a "darknet" mode, where your Freenet node will only talk to other Freenet users that you trust. This makes it much more difficult for an adversary to discover that you are using Freenet, let alone what you are doing with it. 0.7 also includes significant improvements to both security and performance."
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Technology: Freenet Releases 0.7.0rc2 53 comments
evanbd writes "The Freenet Project has announced Freenet 0.7.0rc2. From the announcement: 'Freenet is a global peer-to-peer network designed to allow users to publish and consume information without fear of censorship. Freenet 0.7 is a ground-up rewrite of Freenet. The key user-facing feature in Freenet 0.7 is the ability to operate Freenet in a "darknet" mode, where your Freenet node will only talk to other Freenet users that you trust. This makes it much more difficult for an adversary to discover that you are using Freenet, let alone what you are doing with it. 0.7 also includes significant improvements to both security and performance.' Of course, for those of us who don't know anyone else running Freenet, or simply prefer it, there's also a non-darknet mode available."
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Are we just now getting this dupe (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Are we just now getting this dupe (Score:5, Informative)
No.
It's because the previous article was the release candidate and the official release came out today.
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Re:Are we just now getting this dupe (Score:5, Informative)
This is going to be frustrating for me because I'll get at least one post with something like this in it: "It is really funny and annoying at the same time when some pseudo-informed trolls from 0.5 throw around false information constantly. These people maybe want to get some technical knowledge on networking prior to spreading bullshit."
Before I really get into this, I have to point something out; to really have some idea of the reality of the situation in regards to Freenet, you have to install it and run it at least for a day; I think it pretty much reguires you run FROST (freenets main messaging & file sharing system) as well. There are 2 main freenets, the 0.5 network and the 0.7 network.
freenet 0.7, and darknet, is insecure. With a Darknet system, your node PRIMARILY communicates with the other members (around 10) of your darknet; you are supposed to know & trust people in your darknet. So around 15 nodes.
Freenet 0.5, which is opennet, communicates with all other 0.5 nodes it knows about, with no preference except for tested routing speed. This works out these days to around 35 random nodes.
The basic concept is this: you request some information on Freenet with your client. your node sends out a request to neighboring nodes; if that node has the information, it sends the information to your node, you get it. If your neighboring node doesn't have it, it sends out requests to it's neighboring nodes to see if they have it. this process continues until the information is found.
The principle that makes this all work for illegal information is reasonable deniability; the information in your node is lightly encrypted, but the main thing is that no one can prove you are the one that put it there; your node could have received a request from another node looking for the information, and stored a copy of it.
(this is vastly simplified. I will likely get a post or two from 0.7 zealots pointing out picayune discrepancies)
With open net, this works. you communicate principly at random with other nodes. In order to prove you requested the information the Powers That Be would have to control the majority of the nodes in the open net and statistical analysis.
With Darknet, you have a limited set of nodes. Statistical analysis is easier.
I used "tibetan freedom fighters" in my last post, I'll use "secret plans to attack Iran" (SPAI) today.
You post your
On the NSA run node, they see requests for the keyfile come in. they can tell which node the request came from, but they can NOT tell if your node was the original requesting node; likewise, they can't tell if your node is the original posting node.
With 0.7, it works a little simpler. When the NSA node see a request, they know with a approximate 2 in 3 probability that the information requested came from a member of the same darknet that their node is on. And they know the IP address of the darknet members. Do I really need to point out anything more on this?
(By the way, if I have a substantially flawed understanding of this, PLEASE point it out).
The above point is why the 0.5 network, which, by the way, WORKS for messaging and file sharing (something the 0.7 network has a little trouble with right now), has possibly more users than the 0.7 network. I would say it with certainty, but there really is no way to tell. I know my node connects with about 350 other nodes on a regular basis.
0.7 has better methods of hiding a node from outside monitoring, but the methods do not re
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Re:Are we just now getting this dupe (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't like darknets, don't turn them on. I think you're wrong, but I won't bother refuting that point here. Freenet 0.7 gives you the choice of darknet mode, opennet mode, or a mix. As a corollary, there aren't discrete "darknets" but rather one large network with a mix of darknet and opennet connections (for the most part; there may be a handful of small poorly-connected darknet subnets).
I do not recall any freenet developer talking about implementing any sort of blocking; nor have they done so. Unless you can back up that statement, I will be forced to conclude you are trolling. As you say, the ability to block anything, no matter how abhorrent, implies the ability to censor valid political speech and is therefore a bad thing for a network like freenet.
Also, I suggest you try out FMS as a replacement for Frost / Thaw; it is far more spam resistant for a variety of reasons.
I really don't understand this continued bashing of 0.7; now that it has implemented a proper opennet feature, with the ability to turn off the darknet option, what is the complaint?
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Re:Are we just now getting this dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Eventually, after maybe a day or so of running the node, the speed approaches what it would otherwise be outside of freenet, with some overhead of course.
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Re:Are we just now getting this dupe (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing to see here.... move along (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nothing to see here.... move along (Score:5, Funny)
Oh well, back to the grind.
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How do you find trusted friends on a darknet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How do you find trusted friends on a darknet? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:How do you find trusted friends on a darknet? (Score:5, Informative)
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Great! How do I download it... (Score:5, Funny)
Because, of course, if I haven't got anything to hide, why would I want to hide the fact that I'm hiding something?
Maybe Freenet 0.8 will provide a way to hide the fact that I'm hiding the fact that I'm hiding something.
Re:Great! How do I download it... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Great! How do I download it... (Score:5, Funny)
Step 1 : Post as Anonymous Coward...
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Re:Great! How do I download it... (Score:5, Funny)
(That book looks awesome!)
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ground-up redesign (Score:5, Funny)
They ground up the redesign?
The failure of Freenet (Score:5, Interesting)
Freenet is an important concept. On it you get complete freedom of speech: the ability to discuss and spread your ideas, with full anonymity and freedom from censorship. Of course, this means that you will probably come across things on it that will go against your beliefs. While nothing forces you to actually visit these freesites, you will have to come to terms that this might be cached on your computer even without you visiting them. But this is important to freedom of speech: if people where able to censor anything, the system just wouldn't work.
So why does Freenet fail? Lack of documentation. I don't mean ease of use in the interface - I mean for the protocols and network design. A system as important as Freenet -- one that people expect unfaltering anonymity and security from -- should be rigorously and meticulously documented.
But it's not. In fact, if you bring it up with the Freenet developers they will gladly tell you this is intentional -- that they use security through obscurity [wikipedia.org] to guard against someone finding a way to break the system.
So -- do you trust your freedom with the competency of a handful of developers to make a good design? I don't. I want as many people looking at the system as possible. I want people to really bash on it, to try to break it. This gives me confidence, not worry, because problems will be solved sooner than later.
This would also open up the possibility of more than one client to access the network. If you have two separate clients that implement the same strict protocol and one of them messes up, it's likely to be caught far sooner than with just one. An immediate example of where this would have helped is with a bug that existed in 0.7's AES implementation for a very long time, where the data wasn't being encrypted properly.
The Freenet developers don't want multiple clients either -- again, they worry that one might break the network. This line of thought is incomprehensible to me, because as a developer I would want things that could break my network to be discovered as soon as possible so I could fix the design.
Sure, you could look at the source code. It is Open Source, after all. But what if you don't know Java? I don't particularly want to learn Java just so I can review Freenet's code. As a C++ developer I might be able to read and understand most of it, but I don't trust myself to review something so important without years of prior Java experience -- the chance that I'd miss something is just too great.
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Re:The failure of Freenet (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are two issues here. One is that the network isn't as robust as would be ideal; there are legitimate concerns about buggy implementations causing problems. A lot of the work debugging freenet goes into things that are essentially emergent behavior, and the bugs get even harder to track down on a non-homogenous network.
The second is one of documentation. Yeah, it's practically nonexistant outside of the source code. But my impression from discussions (none recent) of alternate implementations was
Re:The failure of Freenet (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, Freenet's low-level protocols could be better documented, but they are a work in progress, and in almost constant flux.
As for security through obscurity, we go to great lengths to explain to people how Freenet works, you can find a bunch of papers, and video lectures on our "Papers" page [freenetproject.org]). Take a look at this video [freenetproject.org] from three years ago explaining the 0.7 design before we'd even begun to code it.
Yes it would be wonderful if every tiny detail could be documented meticulously, but before we document it we have to design and test our ideas, and that means developing and releasing the reference implementation.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, assuming that you're Toad from the list, that's pretty much what you said back then.
I've added you to my friends list as my small token of appreciation for the great service that you're doing for humanity - if there's any cosmic justice in the world, you and Ian will both be remembered by history as heroes of the 21st century.
But I still think you're wrong about developing multiple client implementations.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is complete bullshit. You want specs? Here are the specs. You want a security analysis? Here's a security analysis. You want to understand the source code? Here's a guide to the source code. If there's anything missing, the developers will be happy to help you fill in the gaps.
Your first link is to the client protocol, not the network protocol. The security analysis is basicly a list of thrown up ideas with no analysis to back up any of it. And the source documentation isn't a guide to much of anything except as bird's eye view.
Interesting writing style... (Score:3, Funny)
"Hopefully the installer will open the page for you, so you won't be reading this."
"Insecure mode should work automatically once enabled, so the rest of this page is about connecting to Friends."
Or how about the java error message:
"The JVM you are using is known to be buggy. It may produce OutOfMemoryError's when there is plenty of memory available. Please upgrade..."
Freedom of Speech vs. Freedom of Hosts (Score:5, Interesting)
Very insightful (Score:3, Interesting)
Freenet is a non-starter for me for that very reason. Thank you for elucidating it so nicely.
Re:Freedom of Speech vs. Freedom of Hosts (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation: I'm for freedom of speech, so long as it is speech I agree with.
Apparently you are not the target audience for freenet. Or the 1st amendment, for that matter.
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Re:Freedom of Speech vs. Freedom of Hosts (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Talk about a strawman arguement! ISP's do not have the same rights as individuals.
"Yes, but what measures are tolerable to prevent it? Do you mind if all your mail is read by the government just in-case it contains child porn?"
No, I just don't want to serve bits of child porn JPG's from my computer, in the context of this discussion.
"Common misconception, this is perfectly legal in the US ever since the Brandenburg v Ohio case in 1969."
Fair enough, but you still understood the intent of the example.
"That is a Strawman argument. Just because I believe that governments shouldn't be permitted to monitor and control communication doesn't mean you believe we shouldn't have governments at all."
I never said that you didn't. I was pointing out that rights can be moderated by goverment, by design. That was at the heart of the debate leading up to the US Constitution. Just how much can Government control rights, and what rights does Government have? Your claim that I was making a strawman arguement was in fact a strawman arguement itself.
Thanks for the civil debate though. It's often lacking these days. I have to go to dinner now so if I don't reply again you'll know why. Be well.
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Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a signal-to-noise ratio problem, and what constitutes signal (or noise) is a function of what the authorities are looking for.
In China, Freenet is a tool used by traitors to pass destabilizing messages (to the PRC, that's signal) back and forth, hiding in a sea of American child porn (to the PRC, that's noise).
In the USA, Freenet is a tool used by pedophiles to pass disgusting images back and forth (to the FBI, that's signal), hiding in a sea of "Free Tibet" and "Falun Gong" emails (to the FBI, that's noise).
Unfortunately, since the network is designed that you can't host one without hosting the other, neither is a particularly advisable thing to have on your network, no matter where you live.
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Re:Isn't that what darknets are for? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. (Score:5, Informative)
Many bad thing may be going on around there , but there's no need to spread FUD . In fact , that's exactly what caused this to happen in the fist place
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you actually seen Freenet? The only purpose it's pretty much used for is the exchange of the worst crimes of humanity.
With Freenet you have to actively look for what you want. If you found "the worst crimes of humanity" it's because you were looking for them in the first place.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
With Freenet you have to actively look for what you want. If you found "the worst crimes of humanity" it's because you were looking for them in the first place.
Again, have you actually used Freenet? Apparently not. There are tons of index pages that point you to this stuff. The people who maintain the index pages take a firm "who am I to judge?" stand on including the child porn stuff.
Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX (Score:5, Informative)
The are 2 ways to regard spread of information
Either it should be possible to stop the spread of certain information , and that will put a stop to the abuses , but it will also make it possible for an authoritarian regime to silence any criticism , and will basically stop freedom of speech .
The other way is to make it impossible to stop information from spreading , and that way you wil ensure freedom of speech , and anonymity to whistle blowers and criticism , but at the same time , abuses will be unstoppable .
There is no midway to this , as it's about technical capabilities .
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX (Score:5, Interesting)
Cars kill the enviornment
Retention of individual sovereignty/responsibility/money kills "fairness".
So, I'm thinkin': a government program can fix all of these woes.
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Re:Exchanging gas ovens? (Score:5, Insightful)
Both are supremely unacceptable acts, full stop. The hypothetical question asked doesn't seem very realistic. "I would choose neither." "NO! What if you had to choose... because you're on a bus! And a madman would blow up the bus if you didn't choose, or it slowed down!" I'm not feeling it.
I'm not prepared to agree that killing N people is better or worse than raping N people, and that's before I even GET to the part where we bring up the religion thing. What if you *raped* N people for religion, but then killed N others just because you're a jerk? How does that stack up? And what if you double-parked because you wanted to make it harder for someone to drive away, thereby increasing the energy they expended and hastening, ever so slightly, the end of the universe? And you just raped N people to produce delicious candy? Hard to call that one, I tell you.
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a quick list of situations or people off the top of my head that could benefit from this:
- Citizens of a government which controls information flow (China, Kuwait, etc)
- Investigative journalists releasing stories (Judith Miller, anyone?)
- Leaking protected or damaging information (Wikileaks has been shown to be vulnerable)
If all you can think about is "OmG teh CHILDRENS!!111", then something is seriously wrong with you.
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikileaks has been mirrored to Freenet more than once. I don't know of an up to date link, or a single regularly updated source, but it's there.
A large number of photos from Tibet are available, and there is at least one highly active user posting them and keeping them up to date, with commentary.
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Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)