DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
1–10 of 93 posts
Re: DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
#2I like the name!
Re: DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
#3This isn't really a "censorship resistance" tool as it is a steganography tool. You can still be censored if your internet access is cut, or you have no way to publish your message.
Re: DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
#4I am going to port this to ruby. I'm currently unemployed and it should be a good sample to share with potential employers.
Re: DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
#5Stenography is one of the NSA's worst nightmares. Encrypted strings sent over the Internet they know are encrypted, and often know what algorithm and key length. But the fact that any image can contain an encrypted message, and there's know way to know whether or not something exists within, scares the shit out of them.
So, good work.
Re: DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
#6Has anyone sensible done any kind of analysis of this?
Re: DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
#7This is from a few months ago. Still neat :)
Re: DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
#8This isn't really a "censorship resistance" tool as it is a steganography tool. You can still be censored if your internet access is cut, or you have no way to publish your message.
> "You can still be censored if your internet access is cut, or you have no way to publish your message."
Hence censorship resisting, not censorship defeating.
Stenography is potentially useful if partial but monitored and censored communication channels remain open. See: The Great Firewall of China, or the postal system in prisons. Some data gets through, but data that they don't like does not. If the data is concealed, you can get it through.
Beyond just stenography, in the Soviet Union and beyond, some writers and artists would use allegory to criticize political figures or the state, enabling them to make points that would otherwise be censored. They could have shut down all film and book production, defeating this technique, but as long as some artistic works were allowed this channel remained open.
Re: DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
#9Stenography is one of the NSA's worst nightmares. Encrypted strings sent over the Internet they know are encrypted, and often know what algorithm and key length. But the fact that any image can contain an encrypted message, and there's know way to know whether or not something exists within, scares the shit out of them. So, good work.
I was under the impression that undetectable steganography was extremely difficult. If commonplace steganography was widespread, no doubt they'd write analyzers to determine what things might be hiding data. On top of that, if steganography becomes widespread, it's likely the protocol will be a common one adopted by plenty of people. At that point, it reduces to encryption, does it not?
Re: DissidentX – Censorship resistance tool by Bram Cohen
#10Has anyone sensible done any kind of analysis of this?
It is very primitive steg. This will not survive antisteg tools. Look at the *encode.py