Users Flock To Firewall-Busting Thesis Project

itwbennett writes "Daiyuu Nobori, a Ph.D. student at Japan's Tsukuba University designed 'VPN Gate' to help individuals in countries that restrict Internet use circumvent government firewalls. The service, which has drawn 77,000 users since its launch last Friday, encourages members of the public to set up VPN servers and offer free connections to individual users, aiming to make the technology more accessible. Nobori had originally planned to host the service on his university's servers, but they have been down recently so he switched it to the Windows Azure cloud platform. He has spent about US$9,000 keeping it up so far."

Public list of VPNs?

[schneidafunk]

"His service maintains a public, real-time list of freely available VPN servers for users to choose from" - What's to stop a country (say Iran) from blacklisting the public list of VPNs?

Re:Public list of VPNs?

[flyingfsck]

Exactly. That is the whole problem with VPNs. They only work till they get popular.

So...

[pushing-robot]

(a) we already have TOR and other services
(b) this guy makes a nice, handy list of server IPs for oppressive governments to block.
(c) I doubt he will come to your aid when folks use your connection for [piracy|drug deals|child porn|planning a terrorist attack].

Re:So...

[pipatron]

Yeah, this is pretty insane. Tor already does this FAR MORE SAFE. Not only does it give governments a nice list of server IPs, it gives governments a nice way to catch offenders.

Re:Public list of VPNs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose in this case they'd have to be constantly scanning the list and updating the national firewall rules. It's a dynamic list of participants hosting VPN service.

My question is more Tor-like in nature... how do you prevent people from doing something illegal (in the host country, like the US) through your connection?

I'd be happy to let someone in China read and post from behind the great firewall, but I obviously don't want strangers sending death threats, looking at child porn, etc. through my home ISP connection. At least with Tor you can participate without being an exit node. As a VPN host, you are the exit node.

Re:$9000! Really?

[localman57]

Because if you don't spend up all the money budgeted to your department, you can't apply to get more next year?

Sigh, I know I wasn't this cynical back in my 20's...