ZeroKnowledge's Freedom Server Code Available 129
hey writes: "The Register reports that
Zero Knowledge's Freedom Network source code is now available." This seems to be part of CodeCon, which is now underway in San Francisco. You can't use the code for commercial gain, but I could see a non-profit network springing up...
Passing the buck (Score:1)
Re:Waitaminute... (Score:2, Informative)
AFAIK, the source was never removed, though I grabbed it immediately in case it had been.
Re:Waitaminute... (Score:1)
Re:Waitaminute... (Score:1)
On the other hand, ZKS claimed to have planned the shutdown before 9/11. But that's not the same as announcing.
Re:How about the slashdot drinking game? (Score:1)
from the happy-valentine's-day dept. ??? (Score:4, Funny)
Or is the idea that people would use ZKS to send anonymous and untraceable Valentines?
Re:from the happy-valentine's-day dept. ??? (Score:1)
And what a tragedy that would be.
Re:from the happy-valentine's-day dept. ??? (Score:1)
More hysteria kills software (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More hysteria kills software (Score:4, Insightful)
Though the *company* may be unable to continue its anonymizing service in the wake of Sep. 11th, the people involved understood that their ideal could be fully realized simply by dumping the code on whoever wants to maintain it.
They may not make a pile of money this way, but, hey, did anyone really expect that this idea would rake in the cash in the first place? Anyone trying something like this must have some ulterior motive (see Neal Stevenson's Avi for a fictional counterpart).
Re:More hysteria kills software (Score:1)
Right. No external force is ready to occupy the USA. It's the Bloated Zombie of D.C. that's the main threat to our liberty.
Re:More hysteria kills software (Score:2)
Their Chief Scientist said: "...support for the Freedom network offering was removed from the client code base well before the recent tragedies of September 11..."
Re:More hysteria kills software (Score:2)
Open Services? (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish I had some examples.
Re:Open Services? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, how many venture capitalists would even *glance* at Linux if the GPL included a provision saying "Don't even think about redistributing this code in some hardware you're trying to sell. This is educational stuff only."
Remember: something can't exactly be considered free (as in speech) if it tells you exactly how you're required to use it. From a law-abiding corporation's perspective, what's the difference between something you can't use and something you're not allowed to use?
Re:Open Services? (Score:1)
Could you imagine playing around with google's source code? now that would be badass.
Re:Open Services? (Score:2, Funny)
void google(char *searchstring)
{
int i;
for(i=0;i<NumPages;i++)
{
if(strstr(Page[i].data,searchstring))
{
printf("%s\n",Page[i].URL);
}
}
}
Proposal (Score:3, Funny)
-1 Evil Genius Rules Violation on the MQR standard (Score:2)
Guido69: Perfect. Now if I can just get this up and running, I can anonymously ask Kathleen to marry me. 'Taco won't have a clue who's stealing his girl! Bwaahahahah.
Perfect? Hardly. In the unlikely event that she decides to accept she won't know who to accept.
Unless of course she saw your post...unless of course he also saw your post...
Anonymity is tricky, yes?
-- MarkusQ
The article saith... (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, it is cool that Zero Knowledge is making this available. But what are the "traditional magic words"? And how would that work, anyway, with PGP? A passphrase usually unlocks only a private key, which, erm, we don't have, as far as I know.
River Phoenix? Open Sesame Street?
Re:The article saith... (Score:1)
Re:The article saith... (Score:2)
opensesame
Re:The article saith... (Score:1)
Sesame sure is a weird word.
Re:The article saith... (Score:2)
Please and Thank You.
I can only guess the 'big bird' reference is someone mixing up 'Ewe' and 'You'. Shame a ewe isn't a bird thou.
Toodles
Re:The article saith... (Score:2)
Doesn't anyone remember "THE WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE"?
Maybe not... Well, it was worth a try
Re:The article saith... (Score:1)
Re:The article saith... (Score:1)
Zero-knowledge proofs are quite interesting because they're so counter-intuitive. See here [ucsd.edu] for an explanation of what a zero-knowledge proof is. Google around for more.
Re:The article saith... (Score:2)
Hey, that's pretty good! That project had large numbers involved, and the final product was really big news
Re:The article saith... (Score:1)
Re:The article saith... (Score:3, Informative)
Symetrically encrypted messages. An md5 sum of the passphrase is ussed to encrypt the session key and this is symetrically encrypted session key is sent just like an asymetricically encrypted session key at the beginning of the message.(Hopefully the session key encryption uses the same cipher as the message. Failing that 3DES. but it's been a little while since I've read the OpenPGP spec.)
Re:The article saith... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The article saith... (Score:2)
Re:The article saith... (Score:1)
Re:The article saith... (Score:1)
That's "Klaatu barada nikto" [imdb.com]. It comes from the sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Re:The article saith... (Score:2)
Re:The article saith...it's an adventure! (Score:3, Funny)
XYZZY
(The world spins around, and you find ourself in front of small house, there are pgp keys and a lantern on the ground by your feet)
ttyl
Farrell
Something else like this (Score:2, Informative)
FYI (Score:1)
Uh, yeah, right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I'm certain there are lots of volunteers out there that want to donate their bandwidth to the cause of having their door kicked down and family forced face down on the floor at gunpoint because someone used their Freedom server to threaten the POTUS, exchange kiddie porn with an FBI agent, or (horror of horrors) download a non-rights-managed piece of music and that person was the lucky person to be the exit server for the traffic.
These servers simply cannot be run successfully by individuals with the potential legal problems of relatively honest use, much less malicious use. And after 9/11, I doubt very many ISPs would be able to weather the storm, either.
Re:Uh, yeah, right. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're not willing to stand up for your beliefs, at least don't mock those who are.
Re:Uh, yeah, right. (Score:2)
Re:Uh, yeah, right. (Score:2)
Re:Uh, yeah, right. (Score:1)
The fact that the ZKS servers were the only ones running almost immediately after the announcement of the closer because of "market forces" (heh) seems to point to this.
Any individual in the U.S. who would put themselves in a position of carrying this traffic and not being able to immediately give up a given sender (which, by design, can't happen in the Freedom network) is one of:
a) a hero
b) has gonads the size of watermelons
b) totally and complete f*cking insane.
The only hope for such a network is offshore--one running in the U.S. would either keep logs for production on demand to Federal LEO's or be shut down, probably by force.
Even Freedom takes this stand with their new anonymizer-like product, Websecure [freedom.net]. From the privacy statement [freedom.net]:
Note that "compelled to do so by law" is open to interpretation--that could be anything from an intimidating guy in sunglasses asking nicely for what d00d123 did for the last six months, or a valid subpoena from a Federal court. It also gives them the ability to log anything they want, under the "detect and diagnose technical problems," without promising that this would not be individually identifiable.
And they still say with a straight face that ZKS Freedom wasn't a casualty of 9/11.
Re:Uh, yeah, right. (Score:2)
what's the situation like up there?
Re:Uh, yeah, right. (Score:1)
When the Freedom network was running, various ISP's throughout the world offered servers, and you could choose your route, e.g. you could make your packets go through Japan, England, and exit in the Netherlands. That would make a subpoena attack on all three very difficult.
Re:Uh, yeah, right why not before? (Score:1)
So A) howabout someone link to an explanation of how to set up a server and point triangle clients to you and
B) let's hear a little enthusiasm for freedom on the web - I recently searched, for example on "constitution united states" and found 2 sites willing to sell me 'chapters' of the constitution before I found the
What's whrong with us, it seems like in some ways the internet has lost content since 1995 (when the gutenberg project was in full swing, muds and bulliten boards were all around and the microsoft EULA was, well, something no one read and it didn't matter.
*sight*
Re:Uh, yeah, right why not before? (Score:1)
Fact is, the exit server is the one where the rubber hits the road--the one where from which the threating emails are being sent, the one trying the stack smashing on web pages, the one trying to telnet to dockmaster.nsa.mil.
Fact is, I'd admire anyone taking the risks associated with that--but only someone either wealthy enough to afford a bevy of lawyers to assert his rights or with a serious wish to see the prison system from the inside would run one of these and make it available to all comers.
Re:Uh, yeah, right. (Score:2)
Re:Uh, yeah, right. (Score:1)
And I doubt many of those "anonymous" proxy servers don't keep logs.
<ultra-paranoid>And how are you so sure those volunteers aren't really the people who want to spy on you the most? At least if anyone had been bagged using ZKS Freedom, that would have put them out of business (pre 9/11).</ultra-paranoid>
Magic Words (Score:1)
--joshua
Mirror? (Score:1)
Re:great use of cut and paste (Score:2)
I've got SHITLOADS. Bring on the modders!
Usability... (Score:2)
'sokay. I'll just let the download run all night and maybe I'll have a whole tarball in the morning. If not, I'll try again and grab it off one of the mirrors that will inevitably spring up.
What I'd really like to see come out of this, however, are 'userland' Win32 and MacOS implimentations ala 'Triangle Boy'.
I'm simply not much of a coder [furinkan.net], or I would spend time on this, since I think it's such an important project.
Make this usuable for both experienced and inexperienced admins, and you have done a great deal for privacy and freedom.
Re:Usability... (Score:1)
not free (Score:1)
Why is this even on slashdot?! The producer of this code is releasing it under a "non free" license.
What Happened? (Score:1)
does anyone know what happened? i keep getting a 404... its still stalling frequently, as well... perhaps getting slashdotted was more than they bargained for... in any case, id like to know the story behind it...
now its back... (Score:1)
Re:now its back... (Score:1)
Still getting 404's !
If anyone has this - please send me a msg.
Thanks!
Files deleted (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who gets free service and then abuses the terms of service under which that service is provided really has little right to complain when their access is permanently deleted.
Paying customers are certainly welcome to use their full available bandwidth. CodeCon is hosted for free, as it was originally an idea a few of us on OPN were discussing and originally organizing.
Network needed (Score:1)
And speaking of the client, has its code ever been released? I know at one point they did release code for a Linux client, but what about Windows?
Freedom also used a "Nym" concept where customers paid for Nyms. When you browsed on the net or sent email through a chain of Freedom servers, the last server in the chain learned your Nym (but not your true identity). Then if you had misused the service, your Nym could be cancelled. This provided some protection against servers in the network, because users would not want to lose Nyms, as they cost real money.
In an open source Freedom network, what would replace the Nym concept? Would server operators no longer have this protection, so that spam or hacking could go through their systems and there is no way to stop the people involved, who are hidden at the other end of a chain of Freedom servers? Or would they coordinate to set up a centralized Nym server and perhaps even require a monetary donation to purchase a Nym, in order to discourage abuse?
Many questions remain to be resolved before even this generous release of source code can replace the service formerly offered by ZKS.
Non-profit my ass (Score:2)
If I ever license anything like that, it's going to exclude both corporate and little scum-sucking "legally" not for profit "organizations" as well. Only truly for "no gain usage"
Maybe if they share the coke...
mirror anywhere? (Score:1)
oh where oh where will the mirrors be!
Freedom Source Mirror and New CodeCon URL! (Score:4, Informative)
CodeCon is being broadcast live from the DNA Lounge [dnalounge.com] over streaming video.
They just announced Ryan at HavenCo has changed the password to the codecon.org [codecon.org] server and conference organizers can no longer log in. They have setup a New Server for CodeCon [deor.org] which has updated info on the conference.
The source to the Freedom Network servers linked from this new server is now at Linux Fund [linuxfund.org]. Yeah!
Tweakdom is a SourceForge project for this code (Score:1)
Those interested should sign on to the announcement mailing list, at:
http://tweakdom.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]
--Will