Live data from Hacker News

Tunneling Internet traffic over FB chat

github.com

21–30 of 111 posts

Re: Tunneling Internet traffic over FB chat

#22
Wonderful proof-of-concept!

Humanity needs steganography-as-a-service. But think how difficult it is to implement in a regime where all networks are monitored and even Android phones are assumed to be backdoored. Most services will re-encode data during transmission, potentially munging whatever secret happens to be embedded. And more generally, its the metadata that often de-anonymizes, not the data itself. If all the dissidents one day begin communicating via Lutheran Insult memes, its simply becomes a matter of picking one up and applying "rubber-hose" cryptanalysis to put an end to the party.

Re: Tunneling Internet traffic over FB chat

#23
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they have any flood protection... Also HTTPS packets should be quite safe.

It'd be more interesting if this was done over Google's chat, since Chrome trusts the Google Internet Authority cert...

What makes this interesting is the fact that Facebook chat traffic is subsidized by Facebook and free of charge in some countries as part of their anti-net-neutrality "Internet.org" initiative. This project allows you to hijack the Facebook subsidy for purposes they didn't intend. Of course, if it becomes popular then Facebook will have to block it, emphasizing the self-serving commercial nature of the subsidy.

Re: Tunneling Internet traffic over FB chat

#26
post #6

I once read a story about tunneling IP over DNS. Something about free Internet/DNS for Microsoft-Update. But I can't find it.

I remember possibly the same article - it was a guy who noticed that airport wifi allows DNS even if you haven't paid.

Yes, they have to because of how Windows detects connectivity (NCSI).

Re: Tunneling Internet traffic over FB chat

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be cool if a company such as facebook supported this. Seeing them as an enabler for free/uncensored internet, given that the country was chosen for a internet.org campaign.

If Facebook wanted to support it they would probably just implement a standard proxy server that would be more efficient. If anybody can handle the traffic it would be Facebook, but I bet their chat services are not really tuned for this kind of usage.

It would certainly be interesting if facebook started to provide proxy access

Re: Tunneling Internet traffic over FB chat

#28
I think this is kind of abusive of FB's infrastructure TBH. It must be hard to keep real-time messaging up for ... okay, I was going to say for 1 billion users, looked it up and it's 1.3 billion monthly actives - 890 million daily actives (Jan 2014 figure). So tell you what, on second thought I think they can handle your data.

however there's a good chance you'll cause some infrastructure problems since I'm sure there are assumptions baked in, regarding how often a user will send new messages, queuing, caching, etc. so I'm still not totally sure how I feel about this.

at the end of the day FB is just a php script. i wouldn't be surprised if you break it.

Re: Tunneling Internet traffic over FB chat

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be more interesting if this was done over Google's chat, since Chrome trusts the Google Internet Authority cert...

What makes this interesting is the fact that Facebook chat traffic is subsidized by Facebook and free of charge in some countries as part of their anti-net-neutrality "Internet.org" initiative. This project allows you to hijack the Facebook subsidy for purposes they didn't intend. Of course, if it becomes popular then Facebook will have to block it, emphasizing the self-serving commercial nature of the subsidy.

Internet.org might not be net neutral, but that doesn't make it bad. Much of the world isn't the US, and differently structured markets need to be considered differently.

Re: Tunneling Internet traffic over FB chat

#30

I think this is kind of abusive of FB's infrastructure TBH. It must be hard to keep real-time messaging up for ... okay, I was going to say for 1 billion users, looked it up and it's 1.3 billion monthly actives - 890 million daily actives (Jan 2014 figure). So tell you what, on second thought I think they can handle your data. however there's a good chance you'll cause some infrastructure problems since I'm sure ther…

> at the end of the day FB is just a php script

Facebook Chat isn't. It's primarily Erlang/C++.

https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=14218138919

Post reply on HN