14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers from Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy are building a system that promises to foil web filtering attempts in countries where governments are trying to censor the Internet.
Dubbed Telex, the system focuses on hiding the user's attempt to establish an anonymous connection rather than the place they are trying to access.
Because of this, it is not a replacement for systems like TOR or other proxying services, but makes it harder for censors to block them.
In order to achieve this the system uses a special method to hide requests in plain sight, in this case within legit HTTPS connections to websites that aren't blocked.
"The client secretly marks the connection as a Telex request by inserting a cryptographic tag into the headers. We construct this tag using a mechanism called public-key steganography.
"This means anyone can tag a connection using only publicly available information, but only the Telex service (using a private key) can recognize that a connection has been tagged," the researches explain.
For this system to work, ISPs from countries that don't censor the Internet must agree to operate Telex stations capable of recognizing the hidden requests and forward them to the proxying systems users are trying to access.
An encrypted tunnel is established between the user and the Telex station that responds first. Subsequent reqiesys are then passed through this tunnel without the censor realizing it.
This is a sort of distributed proxy network built on top of the same network that unfiltered requests require to reach their destinations. Because of this it is very hard to block only Telex communication without blocking everything else.
The researchers have already created proof-of-concept software to test the concept in a lab setup. "We have been using Telex for our daily web browsing for the past four months, and we're pleased with the performance and stability," they write.
When the system will be fully developed its creators hope that ISPs will agree to run Telex stations, either voluntarily or by receiving incentives from governments supporting freedom of speech.