News Telex service could end state internet censorship

Could shift the balance of power in the censorship arms race.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/07/20/telex-service-could-end-state-internet-cens/1

 

Isn't this something that Tor Networks do already?

 

You forget one very important thing. ISP in (e.g.) China or Iran must support Telex and there is no chance at all for that. All traffic is monitored. Every (even privately own) ISP is still state dependent institution. If they step out of the line once, they are dead and buried (often literally!). You have no clue how totalitarian state is run (I have ~15 years first hand experience with that).

Of course there are brave people who trying to work around that, but very, very often with his/her life on the line. So Yanks can be excited all they want, but I'm very sad to say, that censoring Internet is very easy, if you have a lot of $$$ and whole secret police at your disposal.

 

The suspicious part of me suspects that there is some other use for this thing in non censored countries, but I couldn't say what for.

 

Inb4 America says that this is for developing countries and conflict states and that they do not need to implement it.

 

That's not true. As long as there's a telex node somewhere between the start and end point. So if (for example) BBC support telex then a HTTPS connection between china and the BBC could be used to visit any website anywhere.

The problem?

It'll never be allowed! Imagine the risks to security if it was even remotely possible that when you're browser says you're visting the BBC over their HTTPS connection you're really visiting somewhere completely different.

 

TOR doesnt work in china, tried it

 

Shame on the BBC and other news sites for not including a link to the Telex website

It would have to be supported by the end point - HTTPS traffic is encrypted so it cannot be altered without being decrypted first. So in your example, the BBC could redirect website visitors elsewhere but their ISP couldn't.

If this seems to contradict what the Telex website says, then you're spot on - it talks about adding a tag to HTTP headers but these would be encrypted when using HTTPS so no third party should be able to view those tags (unless their client software decrypts and re-encrypts the request using the Telex station's public key before it leaves the originating PC). In addition, browsers would (or should) give an error message if data was received that wasn't from the requested https: website since it would lack the required digital certificate.

Finally, even *if* those 2 obstacles could be overcome, you have the problem of ensuring the request is routed so that it passes a Telex node - it certainly is possible to specify an exact route to take (using IP's Source Routing option) but this would be easily detectable and blockable (many ISP's block such traffic by default to avoid abuse).

As the website says "Telex is a concept rather than a production system. It's far from ready for real users...". With issues like these, I doubt it will be practical anytime soon.

You'll have to use a bridge to access Tor in China now - see here for instructions (in the comments section).

 

And shame on bit-tech for linking to the BBC rather than to any original source!

 

LOL my company already censor's telex.cc....

 

SSTP works fine, why reinvent the wheel.