{"id":13803,"date":"2017-04-21T14:48:51","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T13:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=13803"},"modified":"2017-04-21T14:57:50","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T13:57:50","slug":"new-anti-censorship-technology-called-slitheen-defeat-website-blocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2017\/04\/new-anti-censorship-technology-called-slitheen-defeat-website-blocks.html","title":{"rendered":"New Anti-Censorship Technology Called Slitheen to Defeat Website Blocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian security researchers working at the University of Waterloo<\/a> have developed a new anti-censorship system called Slitheen, which involves wrapping cats in newspapers<\/del> aims to help people who live in countries where the internet is being heavily censored by their Government.<\/p>\n

As most people know it’s already possible to circumvent most censorship systems by using Proxy Servers<\/strong> or Virtual Private Networks<\/strong> (VPN), which can both give you a different Internet Protocol (IP<\/a>) address in order to protect your privacy and \/ or offer an additional connection layer over the Internet that ISPs find very difficult to restrict without harming legitimate traffic.<\/p>\n

However in the endless game of whack-a-mole such systems are by no means perfect and even complex webs like TOR can be hindered, although it takes a lot of effort to continuously and successfully disrupt them. Never the less, the Internet was never designed to be censored and as such there’s always a loophole somewhere to get around blocks.<\/p>\n

At this point some of you will no doubt have spotted that Slitheen<\/strong> is also the name of an alien race in Dr Who<\/strong> (BBC<\/a> TV series) and one that disguised themselves as humans in order to evade detection, which is of course no coincidence.<\/p>\n

Ian Goldberg, Professor of Computer Science at the UW, said:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Some countries block certain websites based on their web address or their content. Similar to the aliens on Doctor Who, our Slitheen censorship-resistance system works by disguising your connection to a restricted website – for example, a connection to Wikipedia or the New York Times – as that of an allowed website, maybe a site about cute cats.<\/p>\n

Unlike other fields of computer science, we have active adversaries. People see our research and how to protect a system and they use that to try to defeat. We have to play both sides of the game – thinking like an attacker to try to defeat our own systems, in order to build better defences.<\/p>\n

There’s always an arms race where the defender makes a better system, then the attacker makes a better system. This is what makes the research fun and interesting but also very challenging.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cecylia Bocovich, PhD Student in Goldberg’s Lab, said:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“The technology not only provides users with content blocked in their region, but it also protects them by hiding the fact that they are evading their country\u2019s censorship policies.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Goldberg is also a founding member of the Cryptography, Security, and Privacy<\/strong> (CrySP) research group at Waterloo, which has provided a rather entertainingly simplistic video to help showcase how Slitheen works. Just try to avoid looking too deeply into the cold dead eyes of newspaper cat.. for he is evil.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the technology is still in development, but the researchers hope to have a version available for public use within a year.<\/p>\n