Peek-a-Boo(ty) 297
Anemophilous Coward writes "Tom's Hardware has a story detailing cDc's new anonymity app, just demonstrated Sunday. Peek-A-Booty is designed to let surfers access sites blocked by government restrictions, and is essentially, a distributed proxy network. It uses a peer-to-peer model, masking the identity of each node. This means the user can route around censorship that blocks citizens' access to specific IP addresses, because the censor doesn't know they're going there. There is also a website dedicated to the project."
re: peek-a-boo (Score:2, Informative)
Triangle Boy [rfa.org] end the Freenet project [freenetproject.org]
anybody knows which program is actually the most practical?
Hope this prospers more than Crowds did (Score:3, Informative)
See also the earlier Crowds [att.com] project courtesy of att.com (and while you're at it, if you use a network of systems [X, Windows, Mac, or anything with a Java browser] check out the amazing VNC [att.com] project).
Problem is, Crowds fell foul of the [brzzt, crackle] VERY SENSIBLE AND FOR YOUR OWN GOOD [bzz, pop] US laws on exporting encryption, and required you to sign a Declaration of Patriotic Fervour [att.com] to get your hands on it, which rather limited its usefulness in restrictive regimes that monitor and censor their citizens (other than the US, I mean).
Hopefully cDc will be able to get this thing prospering in the wild before they get charged with Conspiracy to Share Knowledge, or whatever. Good luck, guys, and remember, get that source out there early, and get it out there often.
Re:Good for some, nightmare for others (Score:2, Informative)
articles on The Register (Score:1, Informative)
Use ssh and squid (Score:1, Informative)
Re:So, who is using my computer? (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. Although the request may come from an intermediary, and you may forward it on to another intermediary. The idea is that you'll never know, nor will you be able to view the SSL encrypted packets to even know what the data is.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what it means. However, your company will doubtless have a firewall in place that will stop you servicing incoming Peek-a-Booty request anyway. Chances are though you will still be able to use it though if you want to surf for donkey porn from work, so Peek-a-Booty is in (slight) danger of dying a quick death through leeching.
Incidentally, most residential cable and DSL customers will find that their contracts prohibit "providing services" to the internet community. Peek-a-Booty is definitely such a service. It doesn't even have the post-Napster excuse that you're necessarily getting anything in return (as a patriotic consumer should). Expect Peek-a-Booty to be about as popular with ISPs as a surprise IRS audit.
Peek-A-Booty is no longer affiliated with CDC (Score:5, Informative)
PEEKABOOTY UPDATE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LUBBOCK, TX, February 7 -- The CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc) would like to clarify a few matters in relation to Peekabooty, an anti-censorship software application currently under development.
Peekabooty was originally the brainchild of the Hacktivismo group, an international cadre of hackers founded by the cDc's Oxblood Ruffin. Hacktivismo's mandate was and is to develop technology in the service of human rights. Peekabooty was its first project; others are in various stages of planning and development.
The CULT OF THE DEAD COW has supported this work from its conception, because we view censorship of the Internet as a cancer that must be excised. However, it should be noted that the cDc membership have not been contributing code or driving the development schedule for Peekabooty. This project was entirely the concern of Hacktivismo group.
Two years ago, Bronc Buster and Mr. Pink wrote the proto-code for the current iteration of Peekabooty. Paul Baranowski (who until recently used the handle "Drunken Master") later became its chief architect and took charge of the Peekabooty programming effort. Some months ago, Paul chose to dedicate himself full-time to refactoring the codebase and finish implementing the remaining functionality.
Paul has recently decided to sever ties with the Hacktivismo group but he will continue to develop the Peekabooty app. Occasionally developers can't find the environment they need to do their best work and now is one such time.
Paul will be leaving Hacktivismo and taking on full responsibility for his work and all future development of his software. So from now on, Paul is directing all aspects of the Peekabooty project. It is no longer a Hacktivismo production. The Hacktivismo group will shift its main focus back to other projects in the pipeline.
We continue to wish Paul the best of luck. We believe that Peekabooty will prove itself to be a liberating force on the Net. Although Hacktivismo has severed formal ties with the project, some members intend to informally contribute their testing skills, etc. to the ongoing effort.
Paul will be presenting a recent snapshot at CodeCon, February 15 - 17, in San Francisco. Go check it out. But please be aware that this is not a launch; Peekabooty is still a work in progress.
Quick Browse (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Isn't it ironic... (Score:3, Informative)
From the Peek-A-Booty Website [peek-a-booty.org]:
Peek-a-booty.org and anonymity
Posted on Monday, February 18 @ 14:46:12 PST by MrHappy
[Peek-a-booty.org] On Slashdot devaldez wrote: Isn't it ironic that the peek-a-booty website requires registration?! I thought the whole thing was directed toward anonymity.
While I suspect this might have just been intended as a cheap shot nevertheless it is a good and valid question. So to answer...
First: this site doesn't require registration. You are more than welcome to post anonymously. Your posting name will be "Anon" and no identifying information about you will be recorded.
Second, and more importantly, we don't actually care who *you* are per se, we're more interested in you creating an identity (or identities) here. Why? Because it allows others to recognize you; it builds familiarity and trust.
Take for example the identity of someone who consistently submits excellent, insightful material. As you read this person's submissions you might begin to develop a trust metric around them: articles they submit are better than articles submitted by someone else. Their having an identity creates a particular value for you and vice versa.
The only thing required to register on this site (and remember: you don't have to register) is an email address. By all means create a free one somewhere, use that to get your password and then forget about it.
There's you, there's your identity, there's anonymity. It's all up to you.
--Cycon