Invisible browsing -- Torpark
Torpark is an anonymous browser recently released by a group called Hacktivismo. They've taken applications that use the existing Tor network and added a Firefox hack to utilize the service. Essentially, they are using special servers that both encrypts the connection from the user's computer to the routers and also randomly changes apparent network addresses to make it harder to put the transactional history together.
Throughout the last 6 or 7 years there have been several attempts to build anonymizing networks, usually based on what's known as "onion cloud" routing (Tor is one of these). Onion clouds are a bunch of specialized servers that talk normal protocols, but do a Marx Brothers shuffle of packets to confuse voyeurs.
Much as I like the idea, I have to add a cautionary note here.
These setups have some drawbacks:
- Interactions with the target website may very well contain personally identifying information, unless encrypted by the site
- You have to trust the people running the server. First rule of privacy: don't trust anyone that you don't have something on
- Sorry, but if NSA wants to read your stuff, hiding it behind a grad student-level math problem is hardly a good method.
Any true anonymity strategy needs three parts, network, identity and transactional. Without each of those pieces, it won't work.
Posted on September 20, 2006
