Improving website resilience with LibResilient and IPFS

We’re always looking for techniques to make services more resilient to all sorts of issues. That’s why we took special interest in LibResilient and mapped out it’s capabilities. It’s a JavaScript library for decentralized content delivery in web-browsers and markets itself as easy to deploy to any website. We’ve looked at LibResilient primarily in the context of static websites. While it should work with dynamic websites too, that was out of focus for us. [Read More]

Steps towards trusted VPNs

VPNs have become quite popular in recent years for a number of reasons, and more and more they are being touted as a privacy tool. The question is whether using a VPN does improve privacy. It is clear that VPNs are quite useful for getting access to things on the internet when direct connections are blocked. VPN providers include a number of tactics in both their client apps and server infrastructure to ensure that their users are able to make a connection. [Read More]

Serving Websites Privately Over Tor Onion Services (From Your Laptop!)

In this day and age when our data is consistently being tracked and profited off of, sharing information safely and securely is difficult. However, that does not necessarily mean that all network services are subject to such scrutiny. Users now have the ability to combine the security of HTTPS with the privacy benefits of Tor Browser and share information through Tor’s anonymous network services – Onion Services. By using an onion service, users can hide their location while active, connect to other Tor users, and retain their privacy throughout. [Read More]

Exploring possibilities of Pluggable Transports on Android

Pluggable Transports (PT) give software developers the means to establishing reliable connections in DPI-filtered network scenarios. A variety of techniques are supported, all available by implementing just one standard. We looked into how this can be put to work in Android Apps. Hence we crafted 3 fully functional PT-enabled prototype Apps based on well known open source projects. All our prototypes rely on obfs4 which is a stable PT implementation widely deployed by Tor. [Read More]

Orbot v16: a whole new look, and easier to use!

Orbot: Tor for Android has a new release (tag and changelog), with a major update to the user experience and interface. This is the 16th major release of Orbot, since it was launched in late 2009. The main screen of the app now looks quite different, with all the major features and functions exposed for easy access. We have also added a new onboarding setup wizard for first time users, that assists with configuring connections to the Tor network for users in places where Tor itself is blocked. [Read More]

Security Awareness Party

In the security world, there’s a pesky belief that a tool can either be secure or easy to use, but not both. Some experts also argue that training people to be safe online is too hard and doesn’t accomplish much (see Bruce Schneier’s recent post Security Awareness Training). Without a thoughtful approach, that’s usually how it plays out. But it doesn’t have to be that way! We’re committed to making online security fun to learn and fun to use, and we’re launching a new series of interactive tutorials to make it happen. [Read More]