Psiphon – Uncensored Internet access for Windows and Android | Hacker News Reader

Psiphon – Uncensored Internet access for Windows and Android

psiphon3.net

22 pointsdanboarder13 comments

When the ssh access to internet is available from office, it is really easy to have uncensored internet with only portable applications (putty and chrome):

My putty setting to access my ubuntu box from my office has a SSH port forwarding: L6128:127.0.0.1:3128

On my box, sudo apt-get install squid

I launch chrome with the command line option --proxy-server=127.0.0.1:6128

SSH has SOCKS proxy support built in, no need for squid and such unless you need to do more advanced things. Just start ssh with:

  ssh -D 8080 myuser@remote_ssh_server

You can then set up your browser's proxy config to use 127.0.0.1:8080

ssh tunnels are not very stable if bad connection, I recommend autossh to maintain the tunnel

http://linuxaria.com/howto/permanent-ssh-tunnels-with-autoss...

> When the ssh access to internet is available from office, it is really easy to have uncensored internet with only portable applications (putty and chrome):

That's clearly not a solution for 99.9% of people who live in regions of the world that heavily censor access to the Internet. And it fails completely during sensitive times (such as an Iranian election a few years ago) when the censors block SSH, and then resort to whitelisting plaintext HTTP.

But you're not wrong, and SSH tunnels are a fundamental building block of our technology.

Can always buy a cheap vm on amazon and tunnel though that.

sshuttle works quite nice as well, provided you're on Linux or MacOS

https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle

I don't think it works on Yosemite yet since the firewall has changed.

Sourcecode: https://bitbucket.org/psiphon/psiphon-circumvention-system

from what I can read at https://bitbucket.org/psiphon/psiphon-circumvention-system this is a thin layer (ssh|vpn) between you and psiphon's proxys to the internet.

It does not provides Confidentiality, Anonymity, nor Integrity by design, it sends plain text (!!) over an encrypted connection so your provider cannot censor, but it does allows them to some interesting features, like ..

> Custom branding. Psiphon 3 offers a flexible sponsorship system which includes sponsor-branded clients. Dynamic branding includes graphics and text on the client UI; and a region-specific dynamic homepage mechanism that allows a different home page to open depending on where in the world the client is run.

From the front page of our/Psiphon's website:

> Psiphon is designed to provide you with open access to online content. Psiphon does not increase your online privacy, and should not be considered or used as an online security tool.

We help people access the open Internet. Our benchmark for success is whether or not our users can get to the content they want. If you need anonymity, use Tor.

> it sends plain text (!!) over an encrypted connection

It sends whatever you choose to send over it. If you send plain text, Psiphon routes plain text. If you send encrypted content, Psiphon routes encrypted content.

A few days ago I read somewhere that you could use Psiphon to circumvent some mobile providers data cap. Supposedly, you would activate it and the data used would not be counted towards your monthly allowance. Did anyone hear of that? Is there any logic behind that statement?

In the past I used a 3g wireless service that intercepted http requests to show a login/payment screen when the data ran out but let https through.

So it could be.

How trustworthy is this?

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