For some reason, the government authorities seize your domain name. Let us say that they do not like the political commentary on your site. Perhaps they believe that like Pirate Bay, you are illegally sharing files. Now when someone tries to connect to your web site they will be automatically redirected to an official government web site. Most likely the visitors IP address will be recorded in some database. Your site is no longer accessible. So how does one circumvent the domain name seizure?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a plugin for the FireFox Browser which encrypts HTTP web communications automatically and transparently wherever this is possible. This is a terrific feature and will prevent intruders from tapping into your web communications and viewing the web pages that are delivered to you.
Wikileaks is a distributed multi node, multi country computer system that accepts and makes accessible information that has been secretly leaked. It protects the anonymity of patrons who want to make anonymous submissions to the website for publication. Wikileaks came into prominence when a critical video of U.S. military operations in Iraq and the killing of some civilians was published on the site. Since this publication, Assange the ostensible owner of Wikileaks has been hounded and the Whistleblower has been uncovered. This clearly raises issues pertaining to the security model followed by Wikileaks.
Proxy Servers are commonly used to ensure privacy while browsing the Web. Proxy Servers are also deployed to circumvent the censorship firewalls which are erected by countries in an effort to control the dissemination of information. An example of such usage is China where thousands of overseas proxy servers are deployed in an effort to enable the inhabitants of China to bypass censor firewalls erected by the State. Censorship of the Internet in China is technologically advanced and the Internet censoring system is called The Golden Shield. In this post, I will explain how Proxy Servers work.
Wikileaks is a network of globally distributed computers which lets whistleblowers anonymously publish sensitive information of public interest in cases where government agencies do not want disclosure of such information. Julian Assange is believed to be the principal architect of Wikileaks. The U.S. Government seeks the immediate arrest (or worse) of Julian Assange on the grounds that over a quarter million highly sensitive diplomatic cables have been leaked to Wikileaks. This immediately raises the question of how censorship resistant is the design of Wikileaks and whether the arrest (or worse) of Mr. Assange is sufficient to censor the information.
Cryptographic systems are designed to encrypt plaintext into ciphertext so that the plaintext cannot be recovered from the ciphertext without a secret key. There are two types of encryption systems: Symmetric encryption and Public Key Encryption. In symmetric encryption, the secret key used to encrypt the plain text and the same key is used to decrypt the cipher text. In public key encryption the encryption key, called a private key, cannot be used to decrypt the ciphertext. An unique key related to the private key, called a public key, is required to recover the plaintext from the cipher text.
Phishing (pronounced Fishing) is automated identity theft on the Internet. It relies on social engineering and deception to to steal your identity. The two main phishing attack vectors are email and fake websites. In this post, I’ll explain how they work.
Encrypted email accounts are incredibly useful when you want to communicate securely and prevent unwanted individuals or entities from snooping into your mail. Encrypted email becomes even more important as Governments across the world pass data retention laws requiring ISPs to store your email for a number of years even if you delete it. Here are the top six reasons why encyrpted email is an important asset in your privacy arsenal.
How do you anonymize your searches on public search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. A recent European Union Directive requires search engines to retain search keywords and the corresponding IP addresses for two years. Here is the technical low-down on implementing search anonymity.
Viruses, worms, trojan horses, rootkits, backdoors, keyloggers, bots and other types of Computer malware are responsible for an entire host of serious problems. Identity theft, data theft and denial of service attacks are just a few of the negative effects of such malware. The first step in dealing with malware threats is to define what they are. In this post, I’ll give simple descriptions (a taxonomy) of the types of malware.
CrypticBox : Secure Encrypted Email
