UPDATED 14:34 EDT / OCTOBER 23 2013

NEWS

Digital Map Attack, Project Shield, and uProxy: The Trio of Google for Freedom of Expression

During an event in New York City, Google unveiled some new services and initiatives with the aim of supporting freedom of expression and knowledge within a larger battle that Google faces for some time in some areas geography of the world. Always sensitive to issues related to freedom of expression in particular through the network, Google has often to deal with visually distinct reality repressive governments and to defend freedom of speech. The Mountain View company announced an initiative which aims to come to the rescue of the owners of a website if it falls victim to an attack like DDoS.

Project Shield

The initiative announced by Google is called Project Shield and seeks to protect those small websites when they fall victim to a DDoS attack, preventing impairment of service and ensuring its continuity. Project Shield makes use of Google technologies for DDoS mitigation in conjunction with PageSpeed Service that enables small businesses to make their content accessible through the infrastructure of Google.

The project so far has been put in place to help some small businesses that deal with sensitive topics. Project Shield has for example helped a Persian blog, a website that provide information on missile attacks and a monitoring service operations election in Kenya. Currently, Google offers the project to invite-only participants. It is accepting applications from websites serving news, human rights or elections-related content.

Digital Map Attack

In association with Arbor Networks, Inc., a leading provider of DDoS and advanced threat protection solutions for enterprise and service provider networks, Google explores how technology can enable people to confront threats in the face of conflict, instability or repression. Google Ideas used anonymous data from Arbor Networks’ ATLAS global threat monitoring system to build a data visualization that allows users to explore historical trends in DDoS attacks, and make the connection to related news events on any given day. The data is updated daily, and historical data can be viewed for all countries.

The Digital Attack Map monitors real-time DDoS events that occur on the network. On the world map shows the attacks in and out of a country and the attack is taking place between two countries known as source and destination. Each attack is accompanied by a variety of information, including the duration, the occupied bandwidth and the ports on which the attack happens. It should be noted however that the information may not be accurate, since the measurements are based on data which by their nature are not complete, without considering that the source of a DDoS attack is often artfully manufactured.

The goal of this collaboration was to show what a global threat DDoS is and how DDoS can be used to suppress speech and threaten open access to information.

uProxy

Google also unveiled a new technology called uProxy, which allows users to use a method to circumvent censorship and surveillance software while browsing sessions on the web. The software behind uProxy was developed by the University of Washington and the nonprofit corporation Brave New Software, and was only supported financially by Google. The promise is to ensure the ability for users to states like China to access the Internet freely as it is being used in any free country in the world.

As per how uProxy prevent users from DDoS attack, Google says insecure connections to the Internet introduce many risks. For example, when using a Wi-Fi hotspot, if you visit a site that doesn’t use encryption, other people on the same network may be able to see what websites you go to, and what information you send and receive. It’s worrying that even some email providers still don’t use encryption; What this means is that on insecure connections to the Internet, any part of the pathway from your computer to final site on the Internet will be able to read your email, and may even be able to modify it.

uProxy routes one user’s connection to the Internet via a friend they trust. Both users have to have uProxy installed. uProxy is intended to allow one user, with a safer and more secure connection to the Internet, to share their connection to the Internet with trusted friends and family, or even with themselves when they travel. By encrypting the connection between the two users, uProxy makes it much harder for an intermediate step on the journey to watch, block or misdirect traffic.

The software creates an encrypted connection between two users via peer-to-peer network in a manner similar to what happens with a virtual private network, a method already used by more experienced users in China to circumvent the controls of government agencies and to access social networks more disseminated without problems. uProxy will only be available for Chrome and Firefox and there is no official announcement when it will be available on Internet Explorer.


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