<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"><htmlxmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"xml:lang="en"><head><title>AnoNet - The anonymous IP darknet</title></head><body><div><h1>AnoNet, Take 2!</h1><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><p>You can read more information about AnoNet below, or on <ahref="http://wiki.ucis.nl/Anonet">http://wiki.ucis.nl/Anonet</a>.</p></div><div><h2>Theory</h2><ul><li><ahref="http://www.anonet2.org/anonymity">anonymity in general and its place in AnoNet in particular</a></li><li><ahref="http://www.anonet2.org/darknet_comparison">darknet comparison page</a></li><li><ahref="http://www.anonet2.org/faq">AnoNet FAQ</a></li><li><ahref="http://www.anonet2.org/intro">quick introduction to darknets and anonymity in general and AnoNet2 in particular</a></li></ul></div><h2>How to Join</h2><p>There are many ways to join AnoNet. If you just want to hang out with us and chat, it's very easy:</p><table><tr><th>Protocol</th><th>Service</th><th>Anonymity</th></tr><tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><ahref="http://anonet.serveirc.com/">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname, custom nickname (note 1)</td></tr><tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><ahref="http://anortr.ucis.nl:8086/?channels=anonet&nick=Anonymous">KwaakNet</a>></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname, custom nickname (note 1)</td></tr><tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><ahref="http://webchat.kwaaknet.org/?c=AnoNet">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Visible IP, hidden username and realname, custom nickname (warning!) (note 1)</td></tr><tr><td>IRCZ</td><td><ahref="irc://anortr.ucis.nl:8804/RendezVous">SRN</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://2dmrunyyp6bp53th.onion/RendezVous">SRN (tor)</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://anortr.ucis.nl:8806/anonet">SRN</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://w53qxqs27amlrwnm.onion/anonet">SRN (tor)</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://anortr.ucis.nl:8805/anonet">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Hidden IP, visible username and realname</td></tr><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://irc.kwaaknet.org:6667/anonet">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Visible IP, username and realname (warning!)</td></tr><tr><td>Telnet</td><td><ahref="telnet://anortr.ucis.nl:8803/">SRN</a></td><td>Hidden IP and username, custom nickname</td></tr></table><ul><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><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></ul>If you're feeling adventurous enough to connect at the IP level, <ahref="http://ix.ucis.nl/clientport.php">UFO has a client port</a>. Once you're online, you can reconnect to IRC from inside AnoNet:<table><tr><th>Protocol</th><th>Service using DNS</th><th>Service using IP (no DNS)</th><th>Anonymity</th></tr><tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><ahref="http://www.sevilnatas.ano/chat.html">sevilNatas (KwaakNet)</a></td><td></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname, custom nickname (note 1)</td></tr><tr><td>HTTP WebChat</td><td><ahref="http://anortr.ucis.ano:8086/?channels=anonet&nick=Anonymous">KwaakNet</a></td><td><ahref="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><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://irc2.srn.ano:6667/anonet">SRN (NickNet)</a></td><td><ahref="irc://1.0.27.110:6667/anonet">SRN (NickNet)</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://irc.somerandomnick.ano:6667/RendezVous">SRN</a></td><td><ahref="irc://1.0.27.103:6667/RendezVous">SRN</a></td><td>Hidden IP, username and realname (note 2)</td></tr><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://irc.sevilnatas.ano:6667/anonet">sevilNatas</a></td><td></td><td>Unknown</td></tr><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://irc.ucis.ano:6667/anonet">KwaakNet</a></td><td><ahref="irc://1.3.3.7:6667/anonet">KwaakNet</a></td><td>Visible IP, username and realname</td></tr><tr><td>IRC</td><td><ahref="irc://irc.pragmo.ano:6667/atomic">pragmo</a></td><td><ahref="irc://1.0.16.111:6667/atomic">pragmo</a></td><td>Unknown</td></tr><tr><td>Telnet</td><td><ahref="telnet://irc.somerandomnick.ano:2323/">SRN</a></td><td></td><td>Hidden IP and username, custom nickname</td></tr><tr><td>Jabber</td><td>irc.somerandomnick.ano (RendezVous MUC)</td><td></td><td>Unknown</td></tr></table><ul><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><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></ul><h2>Why to Join</h2><p>Note: There's now <ahref="links">a separate page with links to many more reasons tojoin AnoNet</a></p><p>You'd want to join AnoNet2 for the same reasons as you'd want to joinAnoNet1: to exercise your freedom of speech and action, without havingto worry too much about people who don't like you making too manyconnections between your online and offline identities. Unlike AnoNet1,we're not nazis about our rules, so if you don't feel the need to concealyour real-life identity, we won't get all mad at you. Just please beconsiderate of those who would like to stay anonymous ("pseudonomous,"technically), and everybody is happy. (For more discussion on thistopic in particular, you may want to check out <ahref="anonimity">separate pagehere</a>.</p><p>A secondary reason for joining is to gain an opportunity to experimentwith internet technologies without breaking "the real thing." Whilethat's not the purpose behind AnoNet, it seems to be a common reasonfor joining, and as long as you don't break too much with your fun,you're more than welcome to have your fun here.</p><p>You may want to join for the social scene (we even have our own socialnetwork, although nobody uses it for what should be obvious reasons),or you may want to create your own social scene. Again, you're notlooking at an "official" reason for joining, but nobody owns AnoNet, so"official" is an artificial term 'round here.</p><p>You may be looking for help with your Mathematics, Physics or ComputerScience homework. Due to AnoNet's nature, many of the guys who hangout here have an academic background in one (or more) of the above,and most are quite happy to help students.</p><p>If you're interested in starting your own darknet, you can get plenty ofadvice here. In addition, the AnoNet2 infrastructure is easy to reusefor any other darknet, by design. (Technical ease of forking is a coregoal of AnoNet2. We avoid forks only by being good enough so nobodyfeels the need to fork AnoNet2.)</p><p>Finally, you may be getting a bit nervous at the amount of regulationpiling up around the world against the public Internet. Since the"public" Internet is owned and managed by a number of multinationalcorporations, it's fairly easy for governments to regulate it. Part ofthe main purpose behind AnoNet has always been to get away from thoseprivate control points, in order to create a truly public internet.In AnoNet1, anybody who can regulate crzydmnd can regulate AnoNet1's"official" wiki (and by extension, its resource "database"), andanybody who can regulate Kaos can regulate AnoNet1's "official" clientport (and by extension, all new AnoNet1 users), so the private controlpoint problem hasn't quite been solved there. AnoNet2 is still largelycontrolled by UFO and somerandomnick, but we have both technical andadministrative measures in place to ensure that as the network grows,the two of us will no longer have enough control to destroy the network,even if our own governments ever decide to try regulating us.</p><h2>The AnoNet Advantage</h2><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><h2>Read Headlines</h3><p>If you only read the headlines from your local news (without clickingthrough to interesting stories, etc.), your anonymity on AnoNet isactually significantly _worse_ than on IcannNet, because you're givingaway geolocation information that your IcannNet ISP already knows butthat AnoNet probably doesn't.</p><h3>Read News</h3><p>Once you start clicking around for "interesting" stories, you'regiving away information that your ISP probably wouldn't already know.However, if you read local news it's probably still wise to avoid AnoNet.(You can still use tor directly.)</p><h3>Just Browse</h3><p>If you just surf aimlessly for hours, you are giving away a lot ofprofiling information to your ISP. With the AnoNet proxies, you canavoid giving your ISP any of this information. (You are still giving thesame information to the AnoNet proxies if you don't use SSL tunneling,but AnoNet proxies can't connect the profiling information with yourreal-life identity, while your ISP (and anybody who can get your ISPrecords) certainly can.) Surfing with AnoNet also means that you don'tneed to worry about your government filtering policies getting in yourway while you surf.</p><h3>Browse WikiLeaks</h3><p>If you're located in a totalitarian regime, your ISP may not allow youto access WikiLeaks. Even if you are located in a less totalitarianregime, your government may monitor your WikiLeaks browsing habits.AnoNet allows you to browse WikiLeaks without your ISP preventing ormonitoring your visits.</p><h3>Do Research</h3><p>AnoNet shines here. Governments can force Google to cough up yoursearch history, but only if Google can figure out which searches you'reresponsible for. If you use Scroogle (HTTPS) through one of AnoNet'sHTTP proxies, the proxy doesn't know what you're looking for, Scrooglehas no clue who you are, and by the time the search makes its way toGoogle, connecting it to you is all but hopeless.</p><h3>Share Files</h3><p>BitTorrent doesn't hide your IP address, so seeding files forhttp://www.thepiratebay.org/ is not necessarily safe. BitTorrenton AnoNet doesn't hide your IP address either, but the authorities can'teasily connect your AnoNet IP address with your IcannNet IP address(in order to get your ISP to reveal your identity).</p><h3>Speak Out</h3><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, <ahref="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><h3>Blog</h3><p>If your blog is easy to connect to your offline identity (say, ithas your name and address, and/or dwells primarily on local issues),then moving it to AnoNet obviously won't gain you much anonymity.On the other hand, if it's "just another random blog," AnoNet has thepotential to keep it that way. For example, if you like to tell readersabout your experience with various products, you always run the risk ofhaving to defend yourself against a lawsuit if a corporate lawyer decideshis client would be better served if your critical review went away.Now, since defending yourself in any court of law is never a trivialmatter (since the judges in nearly all first-world countries assumethat you know all the laws, regulations, relevant case histories,civil procedures, etc. - you know, the stuff you'd normally spendyears in law school learning how to make sense of), you may decidethat publishing your blog on IcannNet simply isn't worth the risk.On AnoNet, your blog is pretty well-protected against civil liabilitylawsuits, since before a lawyer can sue you, he first has to find you.(While there are legal mechanisms in place in many countries to allow alawsuit to get started even when the defendant is unknown, it should bepretty obvious that a court will need to find out who you are before itcan meaningfully involve you in a case. If you've done your homework,the cost of finding you will far outweigh the benefit, especially if theplaintiff knows he has no real case against you and was simply hoping tointimidate you.) In addition, the company hosting your IcannNet blogalmost certainly allows itself to delete (any part of) your blog inits own sole discretion without even notifying you. That potentiallyallows a lawyer with an upset client to take a shortcut and bypass youentirely, simply "asking" your blog hosting provider to remove (that partof) your blog. To avoid having to activate its own lawyers, your bloghosting provider may very well decide to pull (that part of) your blog,especially if you're paying little or nothing to host your blog. In fact,if your blog is on its own domain, there's yet another canidate for theweakest link, in that anybody who wants your blog gone can simply appealto your domain's registrar. (Recall the WikiLeaks case, for example.)On AnoNet, you can easily host your own blog, forcing attacks againstyour hosting arrangements to go through you (or at least through _all_of your peers). Your domain is even harder to attack, since wiping yourdomain off of a single resdb repository would only prevent one AnoNetuser from seeing it (and a simple git rollback would fix the situationeven for that individual user). Moreover, the deletion would quicklypropagate throughout AnoNet, potentially raising alarms everywhere.(Even if only a single user notices the attack and re-adds your domain,his own re-addition will quickly propagate throughout AnoNet, restoringaccess to your domain for everybody.)</p><h3>Publish</h3><p>If you thought publishing blogs was tricky, try publishing a book.("Alms for Jihad" comes to mind as one obvious example, where thepublisher went so far as to delete the book from its own database andburied the copyright.) While physical books may not be so simple topublish on AnoNet (although you can certainly raise awareness of themby speaking out about them on AnoNet), e-books enjoy considerableanti-censorship advantages on AnoNet.</p><h3>Teach</h3><p>You may want to teach disciplines that can get you into friction with "theauthorities" in a tyrannical regime. (Judges in prominent first-worldcountries have ruled, for example, that knowing your way around a computeris an indication that you may be involved in computer-related crimes.)AnoNet gives you an opportunity to teach without your students beingable to point you out to the authorities, even under pain of torture.</p><h3>Report</h3><p>You may find yourself in the middle of a news story, but other partsof that news story may not appreciate your reports. When you reportsomething to WikiLeaks without going through tor, you're leaving a longtrail that may lead to you. With AnoNet, you can hide that trail toa certain extent, if you don't want to use tor directly. (WikiLeaksover tor will still give you better protection than AnoNet, if you'reworried about your government's intelligence agencies getting involved.AnoNet's optimization towards pseudonymity with common IcannNet protocolsis the weakness, here. We're working on that, but in the meantime youhave <ahref="http://www.torproject.org/">tor</a>, <ahref="http://www.i2p2.de/">i2p</a>,<ahref="http://freenetproject.org/">Freenet</a>, <ahref="http://gnunet.org/">GNUnet</a>,and others.)</p><h2>Why Not to Join</h2><p>If you're looking for a ready-made community, where you just show up and"browse," AnoNet (either 1 or 2) is probably not quite what you're after.The whole concept behind AnoNet is that it's whatever you make it.Of course, that's not to say you'll have to build everything fromscratch, but if you want to be happy here, you're best off bringingyour creativity along rather than leaving it behind when you join.(If you've been around darknets before, you're probably quite familiarwith "design by committee." On AnoNet, you're more than welcome toinvite a committee to discuss anything you want, but you don't have toorganize one before doing anything. If (you think) you already knowwhat you're doing, just "build it and they will come.")</p><h2>What You Can Do</h2><p>See the <ahref="services">Services</a> page</p><h2>What You Can Contribute</h2><p>Well, each of us has his own wishlist, but most of us are working onmoving stuff from our TODO lists to our DONE lists, so you're lookingat a bit of a moving (and highly subjective) target. You're more thanwelcome to contribute anything you want, and if it's interesting and/oruseful, it'll probably attract a following. That said, here are a numberof things that would benefit the AnoNet as a whole:</p><h3>Client Ports</h3><p>When a new user wants to connect, he'll normally come in through aclient port. The more client ports are available, the harder it is forany individual client port to abuse its position (for example, if thelocal government decides to try regulating it).</p><h3>Public Email Services</h3><p>Nomius runs a public mail service, and lex is working on another one.While more than 2 public mail services clearly aren't necessary at thisstage, too many is better than too few.</p><h3>IRC Servers</h3><p>IRC on AnoNet2 isn't one big network under centralized control.Rather, anybody who wants runs his own IRC (or other chat) server, andlinks whatever channels he wants to channels on other servers, using acollection of relay bots. (Right now, UFO, pragmo and SRN field relays,and the scalability problems are becoming visible. How relay bots maywant to deal with this is still a topic for open discussion. Feel freeto join in the discussion, or just do your own thing and let everyoneelse be damned.)</p><p>Update: UFO implemented udpmsg3 (inspired by r101's udpmsg protocol),and UFO, SRN, sevilNatas and lex all have IRC servers connecting to theudpmsg3 "cloud" now. The primary advantages of udpmsg3 are that it'struly decentralized, very difficult to censor, fails over gracefully incase of hardware/software failures without dropping messages and withoutduplicating messages, and avoids the long relay chains that normallytake up half your screen.</p><h3>Outbound HTTP Proxies</h3><p>SRN runs three right now and ryuk runs one, but that means between thetwo of them they can snoop on all HTTP traffic from AnoNet2 to IcannNet.Having more proxies gives you an alternative to blindly trusting SRNand ryuk not to sell your click-through data to Google, invert the orderof search results to your queries, and inject malicious JavaScript intoyour Hotmail homepage.</p><h3>IcannNet mailinglist Proxies</h3><p>AnoNet uses a lot of software in new and interesting ways, so AnoNetusers find "accidental features" quite often. If there were an easyway to join the official mailing lists for some of this software, AnoNetusers would probably submit many more bug reports, resulting in betterquality software being available for us.</p><h2>See Also</h2><p>If AnoNet sounds good but not perfect, don't despair: there are a numberof other projects that may interest you either instead of - or possiblyin addition to - AnoNet.</p><h3><ahref="http://www.dn42.net/">dn42</a></h3><p>dn42 is another highly decentralized darknet, and it's also quitefriendly. The main differences are that it doesn't claim anonymity asa goal, and that it's significantly larger than AnoNet. A number ofAnoNet members are also active in dn42.</p><h3><ahref="http://www.vanet.org/">VAnet</a></h3><p>VAnet is a strange animal. It's a highly <i>centralized</i> darknet, makingthe curious claim that centralization actually aids in privacy protection.It's still quite small, but it should scale extremely well from atechnical perspective, due to its centralization. VAnet's official IRCis part of the AnoNet IRC monster for now, so the easiest way to find outmore about VAnet is actually just to join AnoNet IRC and ask about VAnet.</p><h3><ahref="http://ix.ucis.nl/">UCIS IX</a></h3><p>The UCIS Internet eXchange is an attempt to link a bunch of darknetstogether. If you connect using UFO's CP, you're already on the UCIS IX.</p></body></html>