Masque

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]

This post begins a daily blog, live from the 114th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force in Philadelpha Pennsylvania USA, July 23-29, 2022 (in-person meetings having restarted in March 2022 after the COVID pandemic abated). We’re focusing on standards activities of importance to the Internet Freedom community. The Hackathon event kicks off each IETF event, with projects that run the gamut from early implementations of just-emerging specifications to full multi-vendor interoperability testing of nearly-mature protocols. [Read More]

MASQUE is set of related IETF drafts for specifying flexible proxying built into a standard webserver. It is meant to be deployed on a server that is serving public websites, then this connection can be reused for proxying generic connections. It is very much a work in progress, so any of this can change. It is currently built on top of the QUIC+HTTP/3 and HTTP/2+TLS+TCP protocols. The website and proxy packets look the same, and all connections to the webserver will be shared and reused, regardless of whether its a web page request or proxy traffic. [Read More]