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author Ivo Smits <Ivo@UCIS.nl>
date Mon, 03 Jan 2011 02:03:19 +0100
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1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
2 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
3 <head>
4 <title>AnoNet - The anonymous IP darknet</title>
5 </head><body>
6 <div>
7 <h1>AnoNet, Take 2!</h1>
8 <p>Welcome to AnoNet! AnoNet is a highly decentralized darknet, aiming to create a censorship resistant network free from government influence and restrictions. AnoNet uses an IP network to accomplish this, as an alternative to the existing internet.</p>
9
10 <p>You can read more information about AnoNet below, or on <a href="http://wiki.ucis.nl/Anonet">http://wiki.ucis.nl/Anonet</a>.</p>
11 </div>
12
13 <div>
14 <h2>Theory</h2>
15 <ul>
16 <li><a href="http://www.anonet2.org/anonymity">anonymity in general and its place in AnoNet in particular</a></li>
17 <li><a href="http://www.anonet2.org/darknet_comparison">darknet comparison page</a></li>
18 <li><a href="http://www.anonet2.org/faq">AnoNet FAQ</a></li>
19 <li><a href="http://www.anonet2.org/intro">quick introduction to darknets and anonymity in general and AnoNet2 in particular</a></li>
20 </ul>
21 </div>
22
23 <h2>How to Join</h2>
24 <p>There are many ways to join AnoNet. If you just want to hang out with us and chat, it's very easy:</p>
25 <table>
26 <tr><th>Protocol</th><th>Service</th><th>Anonymity</th></tr>
27 <tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><a href="http://anonet.serveirc.com/">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname, custom nickname (note 1)</td></tr>
28 <tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><a href="http://anortr.ucis.nl:8086/?channels=anonet&nick=Anonymous">KwaakNet</a>></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname, custom nickname (note 1)</td></tr>
29 <tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><a href="http://webchat.kwaaknet.org/?c=AnoNet">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Visible IP, hidden username and realname, custom nickname (warning!) (note 1)</td></tr>
30 <tr><td>IRCZ</td><td><a href="irc://anortr.ucis.nl:8804/RendezVous">SRN</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr>
31 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://2dmrunyyp6bp53th.onion/RendezVous">SRN (tor)</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr>
32 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://anortr.ucis.nl:8806/anonet">SRN</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr>
33 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://w53qxqs27amlrwnm.onion/anonet">SRN (tor)</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr>
34 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://anortr.ucis.nl:8805/anonet">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Hidden IP, visible username and realname</td></tr>
35 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://irc.kwaaknet.org:6667/anonet">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Visible IP, username and realname (warning!)</td></tr>
36 <tr><td>Telnet</td><td><a href="telnet://anortr.ucis.nl:8803/">SRN</a></td><td>Hidden IP and username, custom nickname</td></tr>
37 </table>
38
39 <ul>
40 <li>Note 1: your browser may send information that can be used to identify you. Although this information is not directly visible to other chat users, it may be sent in clear text over the internet and over anonet.</li>
41 <li>Note 2: your IRC client always sends your configured username, realname and possibly also hostname. Although this information is not directly visible to other chat users, it may be sent in clear text over the internet and over anonet. You should therefore always properly configure your IRC client!</li>
42 </ul>
43
44 If you're feeling adventurous enough to connect at the IP level, <a href="http://ix.ucis.nl/clientport.php">UFO has a client port</a>. Once you're online, you can reconnect to IRC from inside AnoNet:
45
46 <table>
47 <tr><th>Protocol</th><th>Service using DNS</th><th>Service using IP (no DNS)</th><th>Anonymity</th></tr>
48 <tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><a href="http://www.sevilnatas.ano/chat.html">sevilNatas (KwaakNet)</a></td><td></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname, custom nickname (note 1)</td></tr>
49 <tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><a href="http://anortr.ucis.ano:8086/?channels=anonet&nick=Anonymous">KwaakNet</a></td><td><a href="http://1.3.3.2:8086/?channels=anonet&nick=Anonymous">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname, custom nickname (note 1)</td></tr>
50 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://irc2.srn.ano:6667/anonet">SRN (NickNet)</a></td><td><a href="irc://1.0.27.110:6667/anonet">SRN (NickNet)</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr>
51 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://irc.somerandomnick.ano:6667/RendezVous">SRN</a></td><td><a href="irc://1.0.27.103:6667/RendezVous">SRN</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr>
52 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://irc.sevilnatas.ano:6667/anonet">sevilNatas</a></td><td></td><td>Unknown</td></tr>
53 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://irc.ucis.ano:6667/anonet">KwaakNet</a></td><td><a href="irc://1.3.3.7:6667/anonet">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Visible IP, username and realname</td></tr>
54 <tr><td>IRC</td><td><a href="irc://irc.pragmo.ano:6667/atomic">pragmo</a></td><td><a href="irc://1.0.16.111:6667/atomic">pragmo</a></td><td>Unknown</td></tr>
55 <tr><td>Telnet</td><td><a href="telnet://irc.somerandomnick.ano:2323/">SRN</a></td><td></td><td>Hidden IP and username, custom nickname</td></tr>
56 <tr><td>Jabber</td><td>irc.somerandomnick.ano (RendezVous MUC)</td><td></td><td>Unknown</td></tr>
57 </table>
58
59 <ul>
60 <li>Note 1: your browser may send information that can be used to identify you. Although this information is not directly visible to other chat users, it may be sent in clear text over the internet and over anonet.</li>
61 <li>Note 2: your IRC client always sends your configured username, realname and possibly also hostname. Although this information is not directly visible to other chat users, it may be sent in clear text over the internet and over anonet. You should therefore always properly configure your IRC client!</li>
62 </ul>
63
64 <h2>Why to Join</h2>
65 <p>Note: There's now <a href="links">a separate page with links to many more reasons tojoin AnoNet</a></p>
66
67 <p>You'd want to join AnoNet2 for the same reasons as you'd want to join
68 AnoNet1: to exercise your freedom of speech and action, without having
69 to worry too much about people who don't like you making too many
70 connections between your online and offline identities. Unlike AnoNet1,
71 we're not nazis about our rules, so if you don't feel the need to conceal
72 your real-life identity, we won't get all mad at you. Just please be
73 considerate of those who would like to stay anonymous ("pseudonomous,"
74 technically), and everybody is happy. (For more discussion on this
75 topic in particular, you may want to check out <a href="anonimity">separate page
76 here</a>.</p>
77
78 <p>A secondary reason for joining is to gain an opportunity to experiment
79 with internet technologies without breaking "the real thing." While
80 that's not the purpose behind AnoNet, it seems to be a common reason
81 for joining, and as long as you don't break too much with your fun,
82 you're more than welcome to have your fun here.</p>
83
84 <p>You may want to join for the social scene (we even have our own social
85 network, although nobody uses it for what should be obvious reasons),
86 or you may want to create your own social scene. Again, you're not
87 looking at an "official" reason for joining, but nobody owns AnoNet, so
88 "official" is an artificial term 'round here.</p>
89
90 <p>You may be looking for help with your Mathematics, Physics or Computer
91 Science homework. Due to AnoNet's nature, many of the guys who hang
92 out here have an academic background in one (or more) of the above,
93 and most are quite happy to help students.</p>
94
95 <p>If you're interested in starting your own darknet, you can get plenty of
96 advice here. In addition, the AnoNet2 infrastructure is easy to reuse
97 for any other darknet, by design. (Technical ease of forking is a core
98 goal of AnoNet2. We avoid forks only by being good enough so nobody
99 feels the need to fork AnoNet2.)</p>
100
101 <p>Finally, you may be getting a bit nervous at the amount of regulation
102 piling up around the world against the public Internet. Since the
103 "public" Internet is owned and managed by a number of multinational
104 corporations, it's fairly easy for governments to regulate it. Part of
105 the main purpose behind AnoNet has always been to get away from those
106 private control points, in order to create a truly public internet.
107 In AnoNet1, anybody who can regulate crzydmnd can regulate AnoNet1's
108 "official" wiki (and by extension, its resource "database"), and
109 anybody who can regulate Kaos can regulate AnoNet1's "official" client
110 port (and by extension, all new AnoNet1 users), so the private control
111 point problem hasn't quite been solved there. AnoNet2 is still largely
112 controlled by UFO and somerandomnick, but we have both technical and
113 administrative measures in place to ensure that as the network grows,
114 the two of us will no longer have enough control to destroy the network,
115 even if our own governments ever decide to try regulating us.</p>
116
117 <h2>The AnoNet Advantage</h2>
118
119 <p>You may be wondering what AnoNet buys you, relative to IcannNet. The answer obviously depends on what you tend to do on IcannNet. Here are some points to note:</p>
120
121 <h2>Read Headlines</h3>
122 <p>If you only read the headlines from your local news (without clicking
123 through to interesting stories, etc.), your anonymity on AnoNet is
124 actually significantly _worse_ than on IcannNet, because you're giving
125 away geolocation information that your IcannNet ISP already knows but
126 that AnoNet probably doesn't.</p>
127
128 <h3>Read News</h3>
129 <p>Once you start clicking around for "interesting" stories, you're
130 giving away information that your ISP probably wouldn't already know.
131 However, if you read local news it's probably still wise to avoid AnoNet.
132 (You can still use tor directly.)</p>
133
134 <h3>Just Browse</h3>
135 <p>If you just surf aimlessly for hours, you are giving away a lot of
136 profiling information to your ISP. With the AnoNet proxies, you can
137 avoid giving your ISP any of this information. (You are still giving the
138 same information to the AnoNet proxies if you don't use SSL tunneling,
139 but AnoNet proxies can't connect the profiling information with your
140 real-life identity, while your ISP (and anybody who can get your ISP
141 records) certainly can.) Surfing with AnoNet also means that you don't
142 need to worry about your government filtering policies getting in your
143 way while you surf.</p>
144
145 <h3>Browse WikiLeaks</h3>
146 <p>If you're located in a totalitarian regime, your ISP may not allow you
147 to access WikiLeaks. Even if you are located in a less totalitarian
148 regime, your government may monitor your WikiLeaks browsing habits.
149 AnoNet allows you to browse WikiLeaks without your ISP preventing or
150 monitoring your visits.</p>
151
152 <h3>Do Research</h3>
153 <p>AnoNet shines here. Governments can force Google to cough up your
154 search history, but only if Google can figure out which searches you're
155 responsible for. If you use Scroogle (HTTPS) through one of AnoNet's
156 HTTP proxies, the proxy doesn't know what you're looking for, Scroogle
157 has no clue who you are, and by the time the search makes its way to
158 Google, connecting it to you is all but hopeless.</p>
159
160 <h3>Share Files</h3>
161 <p>BitTorrent doesn't hide your IP address, so seeding files for
162 http://www.thepiratebay.org/ is not necessarily safe. BitTorrent
163 on AnoNet doesn't hide your IP address either, but the authorities can't
164 easily connect your AnoNet IP address with your IcannNet IP address
165 (in order to get your ISP to reveal your identity).</p>
166
167 <h3>Speak Out</h3>
168 <p>If you know something that you'd like other people to know, and you fear retribution from those who would prefer for others not to know what you know, traditional IcannNet forums can be forced to turn over your IP address, which can then identify you. If your email address is with Gmail, <a href="http://mirror.wikileaks.info/wiki/Gmail_may_hand_over_IP_addresses_of_journalists/">you have other problems</a>. On AnoNet, it's comparatively easy to cover your tracks, in such a way that even your own peers would have a hard time figuring out who said whatever it was.</p>
169
170 <h3>Blog</h3>
171 <p>If your blog is easy to connect to your offline identity (say, it
172 has your name and address, and/or dwells primarily on local issues),
173 then moving it to AnoNet obviously won't gain you much anonymity.
174 On the other hand, if it's "just another random blog," AnoNet has the
175 potential to keep it that way. For example, if you like to tell readers
176 about your experience with various products, you always run the risk of
177 having to defend yourself against a lawsuit if a corporate lawyer decides
178 his client would be better served if your critical review went away.
179 Now, since defending yourself in any court of law is never a trivial
180 matter (since the judges in nearly all first-world countries assume
181 that you know all the laws, regulations, relevant case histories,
182 civil procedures, etc. - you know, the stuff you'd normally spend
183 years in law school learning how to make sense of), you may decide
184 that publishing your blog on IcannNet simply isn't worth the risk.
185 On AnoNet, your blog is pretty well-protected against civil liability
186 lawsuits, since before a lawyer can sue you, he first has to find you.
187 (While there are legal mechanisms in place in many countries to allow a
188 lawsuit to get started even when the defendant is unknown, it should be
189 pretty obvious that a court will need to find out who you are before it
190 can meaningfully involve you in a case. If you've done your homework,
191 the cost of finding you will far outweigh the benefit, especially if the
192 plaintiff knows he has no real case against you and was simply hoping to
193 intimidate you.) In addition, the company hosting your IcannNet blog
194 almost certainly allows itself to delete (any part of) your blog in
195 its own sole discretion without even notifying you. That potentially
196 allows a lawyer with an upset client to take a shortcut and bypass you
197 entirely, simply "asking" your blog hosting provider to remove (that part
198 of) your blog. To avoid having to activate its own lawyers, your blog
199 hosting provider may very well decide to pull (that part of) your blog,
200 especially if you're paying little or nothing to host your blog. In fact,
201 if your blog is on its own domain, there's yet another canidate for the
202 weakest link, in that anybody who wants your blog gone can simply appeal
203 to your domain's registrar. (Recall the WikiLeaks case, for example.)
204 On AnoNet, you can easily host your own blog, forcing attacks against
205 your hosting arrangements to go through you (or at least through _all_
206 of your peers). Your domain is even harder to attack, since wiping your
207 domain off of a single resdb repository would only prevent one AnoNet
208 user from seeing it (and a simple git rollback would fix the situation
209 even for that individual user). Moreover, the deletion would quickly
210 propagate throughout AnoNet, potentially raising alarms everywhere.
211 (Even if only a single user notices the attack and re-adds your domain,
212 his own re-addition will quickly propagate throughout AnoNet, restoring
213 access to your domain for everybody.)</p>
214
215 <h3>Publish</h3>
216 <p>If you thought publishing blogs was tricky, try publishing a book.
217 ("Alms for Jihad" comes to mind as one obvious example, where the
218 publisher went so far as to delete the book from its own database and
219 buried the copyright.) While physical books may not be so simple to
220 publish on AnoNet (although you can certainly raise awareness of them
221 by speaking out about them on AnoNet), e-books enjoy considerable
222 anti-censorship advantages on AnoNet.</p>
223
224 <h3>Teach</h3>
225 <p>You may want to teach disciplines that can get you into friction with "the
226 authorities" in a tyrannical regime. (Judges in prominent first-world
227 countries have ruled, for example, that knowing your way around a computer
228 is an indication that you may be involved in computer-related crimes.)
229 AnoNet gives you an opportunity to teach without your students being
230 able to point you out to the authorities, even under pain of torture.</p>
231
232 <h3>Report</h3>
233 <p>You may find yourself in the middle of a news story, but other parts
234 of that news story may not appreciate your reports. When you report
235 something to WikiLeaks without going through tor, you're leaving a long
236 trail that may lead to you. With AnoNet, you can hide that trail to
237 a certain extent, if you don't want to use tor directly. (WikiLeaks
238 over tor will still give you better protection than AnoNet, if you're
239 worried about your government's intelligence agencies getting involved.
240 AnoNet's optimization towards pseudonymity with common IcannNet protocols
241 is the weakness, here. We're working on that, but in the meantime you
242 have <a href="http://www.torproject.org/">tor</a>, <a href="http://www.i2p2.de/">i2p</a>,
243 <a href="http://freenetproject.org/">Freenet</a>, <a href="http://gnunet.org/">GNUnet</a>,
244 and others.)</p>
245
246 <h2>Why Not to Join</h2>
247 <p>If you're looking for a ready-made community, where you just show up and
248 "browse," AnoNet (either 1 or 2) is probably not quite what you're after.
249 The whole concept behind AnoNet is that it's whatever you make it.
250 Of course, that's not to say you'll have to build everything from
251 scratch, but if you want to be happy here, you're best off bringing
252 your creativity along rather than leaving it behind when you join.
253 (If you've been around darknets before, you're probably quite familiar
254 with "design by committee." On AnoNet, you're more than welcome to
255 invite a committee to discuss anything you want, but you don't have to
256 organize one before doing anything. If (you think) you already know
257 what you're doing, just "build it and they will come.")</p>
258
259 <h2>What You Can Do</h2>
260 <p>See the <a href="services">Services</a> page</p>
261
262 <h2>What You Can Contribute</h2>
263 <p>Well, each of us has his own wishlist, but most of us are working on
264 moving stuff from our TODO lists to our DONE lists, so you're looking
265 at a bit of a moving (and highly subjective) target. You're more than
266 welcome to contribute anything you want, and if it's interesting and/or
267 useful, it'll probably attract a following. That said, here are a number
268 of things that would benefit the AnoNet as a whole:</p>
269
270 <h3>Client Ports</h3>
271 <p>When a new user wants to connect, he'll normally come in through a
272 client port. The more client ports are available, the harder it is for
273 any individual client port to abuse its position (for example, if the
274 local government decides to try regulating it).</p>
275
276 <h3>Public Email Services</h3>
277 <p>Nomius runs a public mail service, and lex is working on another one.
278 While more than 2 public mail services clearly aren't necessary at this
279 stage, too many is better than too few.</p>
280
281 <h3>IRC Servers</h3>
282 <p>IRC on AnoNet2 isn't one big network under centralized control.
283 Rather, anybody who wants runs his own IRC (or other chat) server, and
284 links whatever channels he wants to channels on other servers, using a
285 collection of relay bots. (Right now, UFO, pragmo and SRN field relays,
286 and the scalability problems are becoming visible. How relay bots may
287 want to deal with this is still a topic for open discussion. Feel free
288 to join in the discussion, or just do your own thing and let everyone
289 else be damned.)</p>
290
291 <p>Update: UFO implemented udpmsg3 (inspired by r101's udpmsg protocol),
292 and UFO, SRN, sevilNatas and lex all have IRC servers connecting to the
293 udpmsg3 "cloud" now. The primary advantages of udpmsg3 are that it's
294 truly decentralized, very difficult to censor, fails over gracefully in
295 case of hardware/software failures without dropping messages and without
296 duplicating messages, and avoids the long relay chains that normally
297 take up half your screen.</p>
298
299 <h3>Outbound HTTP Proxies</h3>
300 <p>SRN runs three right now and ryuk runs one, but that means between the
301 two of them they can snoop on all HTTP traffic from AnoNet2 to IcannNet.
302 Having more proxies gives you an alternative to blindly trusting SRN
303 and ryuk not to sell your click-through data to Google, invert the order
304 of search results to your queries, and inject malicious JavaScript into
305 your Hotmail homepage.</p>
306
307 <h3>IcannNet mailinglist Proxies</h3>
308 <p>AnoNet uses a lot of software in new and interesting ways, so AnoNet
309 users find "accidental features" quite often. If there were an easy
310 way to join the official mailing lists for some of this software, AnoNet
311 users would probably submit many more bug reports, resulting in better
312 quality software being available for us.</p>
313
314 <h2>See Also</h2>
315 <p>If AnoNet sounds good but not perfect, don't despair: there are a number
316 of other projects that may interest you either instead of - or possibly
317 in addition to - AnoNet.</p>
318
319 <h3><a href="http://www.dn42.net/">dn42</a></h3>
320 <p>dn42 is another highly decentralized darknet, and it's also quite
321 friendly. The main differences are that it doesn't claim anonymity as
322 a goal, and that it's significantly larger than AnoNet. A number of
323 AnoNet members are also active in dn42.</p>
324
325 <h3><a href="http://www.vanet.org/">VAnet</a></h3>
326 <p>VAnet is a strange animal. It's a highly <i>centralized</i> darknet, making
327 the curious claim that centralization actually aids in privacy protection.
328 It's still quite small, but it should scale extremely well from a
329 technical perspective, due to its centralization. VAnet's official IRC
330 is part of the AnoNet IRC monster for now, so the easiest way to find out
331 more about VAnet is actually just to join AnoNet IRC and ask about VAnet.</p>
332
333 <h3><a href="http://ix.ucis.nl/">UCIS IX</a></h3>
334 <p>The UCIS Internet eXchange is an attempt to link a bunch of darknets
335 together. If you connect using UFO's CP, you're already on the UCIS IX.</p>
336
337 </body></html>