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Freenet Version 0.7 Release Candidate 1 Available 232

apostle5406 writes to mention that the "Freenet" project (a global peer-to-peer publishing network) has unveiled their first release candidate. "Freenet 0.7 is a ground-up rewrite of Freenet. The key user-facing feature in Freenet 0.7 is the ability to operate Freenet in a "darknet" mode, where your Freenet node will only talk to other Freenet users that you trust. This makes it much more difficult for an adversary to discover that you are using Freenet, let alone what you are doing with it. 0.7 also includes significant improvements to both security and performance."
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Freenet Version 0.7 Release Candidate 1 Available

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  • Well, that's good... (Score:3, Informative)

    by koh ( 124962 ) on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:04PM (#22924920) Journal
    But is it faster? Please?

    • by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:09PM (#22924980)

      Yes, it's faster. No, it's not fast, but it is usable.

      There are some browser setting changes that help a lot; Freenet includes a Firefox profile with the appropriate changes for use when browsing Freenet. It won't ever be as fast as the web, but most freesites are quite usable. Plenty of people report success downloading largish files (isos, etc).

      You'll want to leave your node connected for a while; it will get faster over the first few minutes / hours it's installed, and somewhat even after that, especially as your node begins to cache popular data. As always, having a fast network connection helps a lot.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        This is exactly what was always said about Freenet -- leave your node connected for awhile, large files work well, change your browser settings, etc.

        And I did this, and it worked, somewhat. It was just staggeringly unusable, most of the time.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Threni ( 635302 )
      Probably easier to make a secure system faster than a fast system secure.

      What's really needed is cities/countries covered by individual Wifi devices - ie outside of the reach of ISPs. You'd probably hate the speed of that until it reached critical mass, but it would be impossible in theory to prevent the spread of any `numbers` using that system.
    • by grumbel ( 592662 ) <grumbel+slashdot@gmail.com> on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:53PM (#22925344) Homepage
      When it comes to speed Freenet has still a few problems:

      1) Freenet tries to keep downstream and upstream bandwidth equal, this means that it gets hard to tell if your node is downloading or uploading anything, which is good for anonymity, but it also means that you are limited to your upstream bandwidth, which with most DSL providers isn't all that great and often a tenth of your normal downstream bandwidth. There is basically no chance that this ever gets fixed.

      2) Freenets datastore/cache is extremely slow, it doesn't really matter how often you already already visited a page, revisiting it again takes often a long long while, while it really should be instantaneous, after all the data is already on your machine. Tweaking a few settings in Firefox helps a bit, but the performance is still so bad that it is basically unusable for actual browsing, even if things are in your cache. This pretty much sucks, but luckily isn't by design and should be fixable.

      3) KSK redirect downloads are slow, which in turns means that message systems like Frost, that are based on KSKs, are very easily spammed up to a level where you can't even download all the spam, i.e. it isn't just an annoyance but completly blocks both download and upload of messages. There is another messaging system in development and that KSK problem might also be fixable from what I understand.

      Other then that Freenet works for most parts as expected. It won't win any speed records anytime soon, but it works for uploading and downloading even larger ones when you have the time.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by fbjon ( 692006 )
        A few rebukes:
        1. The default for Freenet nodes is to have downstream limit = 4 * upstream limit. My stats show the total input at about 50% more compared to output over a couple of days of uptime.
        2. Revisiting is actually instantaneous for me right now, I just checked with a page I've never visited before that wasn't already in my datastore/cache (took about 14 seconds to load the first time).
    • Nope, still too slow to make a viable kiddie porn distribution channel.

      • Can anyone give us numbers on the precise percentage of Freenet traffic that kiddie porn makes up?

        I'm concerned about the kiddie porn problem, but why the hell would people even go through the trouble of using Freenet just to trade kiddie porn?

        It's sick, but sometimes I wonder if the individuals who do upload that shit to Freenet do it precisely to get Freenet shut down.

        What better way to get something shut down than to upload kiddie porn? Any serious users wont want to use it anymore and then it will ONLY
  • Great, but how fast is it? I've used it in the past and supported it for a while, but it was horrifically slow.
  • by garett_spencley ( 193892 ) on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:05PM (#22924924) Journal
    "This makes it much more difficult for an adversary to discover that you are using Freenet, let alone what you are doing with it."

    Sure, that's all fine and dandy for the person who wants to conceal that he's using Freenet ... but what about us stalkers and snoopers ? Where does that leave us ?

    The humanity! :(
  • Pedophiles (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The sad fact is that freenet has historically been full of pedophiles. This will only further enable pedophiles to hide from the FBI.
    • by Slashdot Suxxors ( 1207082 ) on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:07PM (#22924960)
      That is a complete fabrication. You sir, ought to be ashamed with yourself for turning /. into a HOUSE OF LIES.
      • Re:Pedophiles (Score:4, Insightful)

        by paganizer ( 566360 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `1evorgeht'> on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:16PM (#22925044) Homepage Journal
        It is a fabrication.
        I've been using freenet for a long, long, log time, since 0.3 was freshly released.
        The truth is that Pedophiles do NOT use Freenet 0.7; it's insecure, and their identity would be too easily compromised.
        This means it's also not smart for whistle blowers, activists, freedom fighters, or anyone else to trust it's anonymity & privacy. You seize the computer of one Darknet user, and all the members of that darknet are compromised. other insecurities abound.
        A good rule of thumb; if Pedophiles can use a system with impunity, it's probably safe to talk about your boss ripping off the government.
        Freenet 0.5 is still active, still has thousands (at least) of users, and is still private and anonymous; the only thing anyone can say about a user without using a keylogger is that they are, indeed, a user. and thats not necessarily easy to say with total certainty.
        Freenet is either going to have Pedo's and other sick farks, or it's anonymous & private; you can't have both.
        • Re:Pedophiles (Score:4, Insightful)

          by paganizer ( 566360 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `1evorgeht'> on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:19PM (#22925062) Homepage Journal
          "Freenet is either going to have Pedo's and other sick farks, or it's anonymous & private; you can't have both."

          note to self: use the frakking preview button!!

          try "Freenet is either going to have Pedo's and other sick farks, or it's NOT anonymous or private; you can't have it both ways"
          • Well you could... (Score:2, Insightful)

            by davidwr ( 791652 )
            But that would require eliminating "Pedo's and other sick farks" from the Internet-using population, which is impossible without either eliminating the Internet or eliminating the human population.

            To put it another way:
            Before 1969 when Al Gore invented the tubular interwebs, there were no "Pedo's and other sick farks" on the Internet, and after the human race self-destructs, there won't be any either. In the meantime, it's unavoidable.
          • Re:Pedophiles (Score:5, Insightful)

            by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Monday March 31, 2008 @07:11PM (#22926054) Journal
            Unfortunately, a secure, private, anonymous network will draw people doing nasty things.

            That does not make it any less necessary for our future freedom.

            Remember, privacy does the same thing: it allows people to do bad things. That doesn't mean we give up our privacy, just because people will do bad things privately.

            At some point, pedophiles (and other bad actors) have to stick their heads above ground in order to satisfy their urges. That's where they should be met and stopped.

            I think it's safe to say that any communication medium that is secure, private and anonymous will be accused of harboring the "bad guy du jour" whether it's terrorists, pedophiles or soon, file sharers. It doesn't matter whether this accusation is true or not, because those with power are going to make the accusations regardless. If our world is to be governed by a tiny group of rich and powerful people, preventing personal security, privacy and anonymity is a matter of survival.

            That's why we have to support Freenet and other such tools. Plus, it's a great way of flushing out the tyrants: Just look at whomever is originating the claim that such a tool is full of "pedophiles, terrorists, gay priests, etc etc".

            Remember, child pornography can be sent in a sealed envelope. Should we abolish the sealing of envelopes? It's been tried elsewhere. You can bet that shutting down Freenet or any other secure anonymous mode of communication will do absolutely nothing to eliminate pedophilia and other perversions from the face of the Earth.

            You'd have better luck locking up all the priests (and Republicans). [note: I'm just kidding... .. about the priests.]


          • If theres so many pedophiles on the net searching for kiddie porn, wouldn't they use Google?

            I'm not saying they wont use freenet, but there are ways to catch them. Google probably has a record of their search history, and likely flags the people who have pedophile search patterns. These people should get watched.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by evanbd ( 210358 )
          What makes you say 0.5 is more secure than 0.7? There have been a large number of improvements, especially security ones. Not to mention it's faster...
          • Re:Pedophiles (Score:5, Interesting)

            by paganizer ( 566360 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `1evorgeht'> on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:58PM (#22925396) Homepage Journal
            it's a darknet.
            The big draw of the Darknet system, to the best of my knowledge, is that it makes you less likely to be noticed in the first place, and you can sort of "pick & choose" which nodes your computer talks to.
            Lets put this in a real world situation:
            You are A tibetan, living in the U.S.; you have a Darknet made up of other Tibetans, some of them living in China, some in Tibet. You use Freenet 0.7 to plan protests.
            If one of your darknet members gets caught by the chinese government, for whatever reason, they will take that persons computer and analyze it. assuming the person did not put the Freenet 0.7 files in a encrypted volume, they then have the IP address of each computer that persons Freenet 0.7 node talked to; since it's a Darknet, they know that those computers are probably involved with the same thing the person they caught was involved in.
            In a Open Net (Freenet 0.5), no matter how they analyze the persons computer, they can't say anything about the other nodes the examined computer talked to except that they are running Freenet 0.5; they are still most likely screwed if they live in China or Tibet, but they could conceivably be a little less screwed.

            There are some other security improvements in 0.7; nothing is stopping the Freenet developers from putting those improvements on the 0.5 system.
            • by grumbel ( 592662 )

              nothing is stopping the Freenet developers from putting those improvements on the 0.5 system.
              Why should they? Opennet is back in Freenet 0.7.
            • by evanbd ( 210358 )
              If you don't like darknet mode, then don't use it. If you like it, use it. It's that simple. 0.7 has both available.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by westlake ( 615356 )
          A good rule of thumb; if Pedophiles can use a system with impunity, it's probably safe to talk about your boss ripping off the government.

          It would also seem to be a good rule of thumb to assume that the system used by the most dangerous elements in society is the system that is going to be under systematic attack by the agencies most likely to have the resources to defeat it.

        • I tried it 3 years or so ago.
          Back at that time, there were some links to "default" pages, including some "more or less" directories (i.e. User-lists of freenet sites).

          The only directory that loaded before timeout (its freenet, yeah), had 3 links to sites with descriptions that clearly showed its childporn.
          I would really _love_ to think that this was just some anomaly, but the only other guy i know who tried it came to the same conclusion: Childporn, a few white pride nuts and somne lonely warez that take 50
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
          "Freenet 0.5 is still active, still has thousands (at least) of users, and is still private and anonymous;"

          I'm curious...what makes 0.7 less secure and anonymous than 0.5? Can you expand on this?

      • Re:Pedophiles (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:22PM (#22925092) Homepage
        I'm not surprised that the grandparent decided to post anonymously. The only thing worse for your slashdot karma than criticizing Apple in a comment on an Apple story is to criticize BSD or Freenet in a comment on a BSD or Freenet story. The grandparent (who has now been modded down to -1, Troll) is factually correct. I tried out freenet several years ago, and poking around in the content that existed, it was extremely heavily weighted toward child pornography. Based on that observation, I made a personal decision that I didn't want to run a freenet node, because having my computer running as a freenet node meant I was contributing to that. Now we could have a reasoned debate about the issues. We could ask whether the individual has a responsibility not to contribute to this, or whether the individual is more like a common carrier. We could ask whether any government restrictions on free speech are morally and philosophically acceptable. We could talk about whether concern about child sexual abuse has turned into hysteria, and has resulted in bad legislation. We could make careful distinctions between government and private action against speech we disapprove of. Yes, we could do all these things, but we won't, because this thread is about Freenet, and therefore it will be heavily modded by people who are fans of Freenet. Ironically enough, Freenet users on Slashdot have shown unlimited willingness to use moderation to silence opposing points of view. How do I know? Because this isn't the first time I've sacrificed karma by trying to make a skeptical post about Freenet in slashdot comments on a Freenet story.
        • Re:Pedophiles (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:50PM (#22925308) Journal

          Yes, we could do all these things, but we won't, because this thread is about Freenet, and therefore it will be heavily modded by people who are fans of Freenet. Ironically enough, Freenet users on Slashdot have shown unlimited willingness to use moderation to silence opposing points of view. How do I know? Because this isn't the first time I've sacrificed karma by trying to make a skeptical post about Freenet in slashdot comments on a Freenet story.
          It's usually not about what you post, but how you post.

          Anyway, yes, obviously there are a number of pedophiles around there. After all, Freenet is a fairly successful anonymizing network. But thanks to this property, it can be immensely useful to other people as well. I'm not sure what can be done about that problem, if anything. Once it starts being monitored to screen the child porn, everything else will be screened too, and those doing the screening will likely only be mere humans that may choose to censor other material as well. And then everything is lost. Anonymizing properly seem to be a bit of an all or nothing deal, just like there is no such thing as a "little" freedom. Either you have it, or you don't.

          I guess in the end, it is a fairly simply philosophical matter. A question on whether a person is willing to risk supporting something that's criminal in most parts of the world for other things the person believes in or not.
          • Re:Pedophiles (Score:4, Insightful)

            by amRadioHed ( 463061 ) on Monday March 31, 2008 @08:35PM (#22926768)

            I guess in the end, it is a fairly simply philosophical matter. A question on whether a person is willing to risk supporting something that's criminal in most parts of the world for other things the person believes in or not.
            Speaking for myself, my opposition to child pornography has nothing to do with its legal status. I support some things that are currently illegal and I oppose some things that are currently legal. My personal morals are not linked to the whims of lawmakers.

            I am not interested in running a freenet node because despite its potential for good the reality is that the chances that my actions will actually accomplish any good are vanishingly small while it's almost a certainty that I would be aiding the distribution of harmful material. There are other ways to support free speech without also compromising my belief in not causing harm to others.
            • by hodet ( 620484 )
              I couldn't have said it better myself. Well done.
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by stdarg ( 456557 )

              I am not interested in running a freenet node because despite its potential for good the reality is that the chances that my actions will actually accomplish any good are vanishingly small while it's almost a certainty that I would be aiding the distribution of harmful material.

              As decent people leave, the network has a higher percentage of bad content. I'm sure people would never have used email and the WWW if 90% of first adopters had been pedophiles, but think of what the world would have missed out on in that case.

              It also reminds me a lot of plummeting real estate prices in newly desegregated inner-city neighborhoods. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. "If THEY move in, it'll all go to hell! I'm getting out of here!" then they pat themselves on the back when it indeed does go to

        • Re:Pedophiles (Score:4, Informative)

          by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:57PM (#22925388) Homepage Journal

          I tried out freenet several years ago, and poking around in the content that existed, it was extremely heavily weighted toward child pornography.

          I don't know what index pages you managed to find, but the ones that are preconfigured in Freenet (as of about 6 months ago when I last tried it) were packed with links to government criticisms and a mix of stuff from Wikileaks and Project Gutenberg. The reason you keep getting modded down is that your claim is factually incorrect based on what I've seen.

          I'll take your word for it that the nastier stuff is available, even if you have to go digging for it. That doesn't mean that Freenet's not potentially very useful, in exactly the same way the Internet itself is useful even when considering the bad elements.

        • by xant ( 99438 )

          Ironically enough, Freenet users on Slashdot have shown unlimited willingness to use moderation to silence opposing points of view.
          On the contrary. This is slashdot.. those comments aren't silenced, they've simply been driven underground, into the darknet, where presumably other freenet users can read them.
        • by Kjella ( 173770 )
          I think Freenet is penny-arcade's greater internet fuckwad theory as applied to pedophiles. The original link seems down [penny-arcade.com] but this site has a copy [pastiche.org]. In the original form it states: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad. There's not exactly many places pedos can flaunt their sexual preference publicly, so those that want to show off end up there. Most other people I'd think come to Freenet to stay private rather than the opposite. I gather that by "poking around" you mean informal surfing around
        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by NEOatNHNG ( 1265380 )

          I tried out freenet several years ago, and poking around in the content that existed, it was extremely heavily weighted toward child pornography.

          Of course Freenet is used for child pornography too, paedophiles would be dumb if they didn't use it for their purposes. You can say whatever you want about paedophiles, I for my myself would call them perverts, disgusting people harming those who can't defend themselves, but one thing I can't say about them is that they're more stupid than other people.

          The point is, that Freenet wasn't designed for those people, it was designed to enable everyone to speak up without having to fear censorship. I would e

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kamokazi ( 1080091 )
      Nonsense. There are plenty of freenet sites on how to make explosive devices as well as the locations of animal testing labs.

      On a serious note, yes it will. But the world is full of tradeoffs. Nothing is perfect. High anomnity allows the scumballs to hide just as much as the legitimite users. Althogh scumballs and legitimate users are a matter of perspective. You may share copyrighted files on there, and think the pedophile is bad for sharing kiddie porn, while he thinks the terrorist is bad for shari
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by QCompson ( 675963 )

          The problem I have with Freenet(and why I don't run it anymore) is that it hasn't been tested in US court yet. For those not from here, the US is currently having a "save the childrens from them evil pedos!" witch hunt that makes the red scare look tame. And while I know that Freenet encrypts the cache, I also now that someone with the unlimited funds of the FBI can throw some serious iron at cracking that crypto. Now I'll admit that I haven't studied Freenet's algorithm for encryption, so I have no idea how much iron it would take to crack it, but considering that a single thumbs.db file can net you ten years in PMITA prison, not to mention destroying any future you may have had before conviction, means that until a US court rules on whether the cache from Freenet is considered an illegal download or not I simply cannot risk my families future on it.

          Agreed. The current atmosphere in the US towards anything even suspected of being child pr0n is too hysterical and kneejerk to take any risk. Happen to run across a picture of a naked child 3 years ago and immediately delete it? That could cost you five years in federal prison and a lifetime of sex-offender registration.

          The penalties for child pr0n possession have become insane, and the threshold is very, very low. The definition of what constitutes child pr0n also becomes broader every year. I don

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by QCompson ( 675963 )

              The worst part IMHO, is the way they have pretty much left it to the discretion of the prosecutors and judges.

              I agree with your post, but the reason it is left to the discretion of the prosecutors and the judges is because of current public opinion. 99% of the time any jury in the usa will convict anyone and anything the instant they hear the words "child pornography". They convict people possessing thumbs.db files, they convict people for possessing images of clothed children, and they convict underage teenagers for taking nude pictures of themselves... The media and law enforcement have hyped up child pornogr

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TempeTerra ( 83076 )

        But yes, generally, most people, myself included, would agree pedophiles are scum and deserve a fate worse than the death penalty. I was just playing devil's advocate.

        I suspect you were just being flippant, but in case you weren't...

        A lot of people believe that the death penalty is never justified. Check out the wikipedia map [wikipedia.org]. It strikes me as odd that the US constitution doesn't prohibit state-endorsed murder. I believe that the highest legal punishment should be life imprisonment, but that's a different r



    • If it's filled with pedophiles, show us some proof. Stop fear mongering.

      People like to say the internet is filled with pedophiles too, and it's usually the people who never seriously use the internet who think this way.

      The pedophiles exist EVERYWHERE, they aren't on the internet, or on Freenet, they are your neighbors, and a lot of them like to be gym teachers and priests, and other suspicious jobs. I guess lately we like to think that the internet is a haven for pedophiles, as if the pedophiles didn't exis
  • Freedom (Score:5, Interesting)

    by immcintosh ( 1089551 ) <slashdot@ian m c i n t osh.org> on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:10PM (#22924998) Homepage
    Seems like Freenet is really pursuing their namesake, and setting themselves up specifically to provide a means of communication within otherwise locked down and totalitarian environments. A commendable goal I think. I have to wonder though, if this level of security is actually necessary, who CAN you really trust to use this new "darknet" with? Seems like the sort of place you'd use it would also be the sort of place where you could trust no one.
    • by evanbd ( 210358 )
      If you can trust literally no one, you're screwed no matter what. But it's easy to imagine cases where the government or mafiaa are actively trying to figure out who's doing what, but you can trust people you know face to face.
    • Re:Freedom (Score:5, Interesting)

      Let's say you're going on a business trip into hostile territory and want to be able to access data from HQ... all of your company could set up a darknet and keep all the sensitive data on it -- then when you're accessing it via your soon-to-be competitor's LAN, their sysadmin can's snoop in on the data you're accessing.

      Also useful for Tibettan monks blogging about their current activities and trying to get the word out ;)
      • Let's say you're going on a business trip into hostile territory and want to be able to access data from HQ... all of your company could set up a darknet and keep all the sensitive data on it -- then when you're accessing it via your soon-to-be competitor's LAN, their sysadmin can's snoop in on the data you're accessing.

        Or I don't know, you could use ssh/scp/vpn? Something fast that doesn't suck? The only extra freenet adds is that the hostiles wouldn't know which servers you were talking to I guess.

    • Who CAN you really trust to use this new "darknet" with?

      It sounds like this is a response to the story about *embassies* that discovered they were 1-hop on freenet away from an attacker. I assume the people who actually need this level of security will find a way to set themselves up. E.g. set up enough "front" nodes that the important traffic isn't so obvious to the rest of the darknet. Individuals are in much worse shape when you consider that the connection can be seen as enough evidence by an author

    • by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <jmorris AT beau DOT org> on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:35PM (#22925198)
      > Seems like the sort of place you'd use it would also be the sort of place where you could trust no one.

      It's worse. There ain't no such thing as a 'darknet' to your ISP. If you are in the sort of place that needs Freenet you can be certain your ISP will report you to the government for using freenet. In the sort of places that need Freenet, possession of Freenet will get you shot. In places that having freenet won't get you shot the only people who will bother setting it up is pedophiles and others who are doing things that would get them imprisoned or shot.

      These are hard facts. Yes it would be great if a critical mass of non illegal activity could get on Freenet to provide the chaff to provide cover for the occasional whistleblower who really needs it, but getting from here to there is all but impossible. Freenet will, by design, underperform a normal straight connection so there is a strong disincentive for legit content to use it. The only possible hope is if the *IAA goons drive piracy[1] far enough underground that the file traders adopt Freenet. But I really doubt Freenet in it's current form will be able to scale anywhere near large enough to handle the warez scene, especially in the age of full HD ripping we are hurtling towards. The limited size of the local data cache and cable/DSL upload speeds just won't suffer the inefficiencies involved.

      [1] Yes, 'pirated' movies are illegal just like kiddieporn but as a practical matter they differ in one vital aspect. 90+% of Internet users currently trade movies, songs, etc. and thus would likely trade them on Freenet if Bittorrent becomes too dangerous, whereas few will currently install a freenet node due to the popular perception is that having one currently is tantamount to admitting being into, or at least a willing faciliator of kiddieporn.
      • by debrain ( 29228 )
        The trick, then, is to use steganography [wikipedia.org] to hide transmissions of secret information in such a way that their very existance is plausibly deniable. A hard problem, also.
        • by grumbel ( 592662 )
          Steganography simply doesn't work here, because you have far to much traffic to hide and far to little traffic to hide it in.
          • Why wouldn't Steganography work?

            In theory, steganography would work. The main problem however is that Freenet isn't as secure as it could be.
            • by grumbel ( 592662 )
              The upstream bandwidth used by Freenet is much larger then upstream used by normal web traffic, the number of simultaneous connections is also much larger.

              Trying to use Steganography to hide Freenet is like trying to hide a Steganosaurus in a mail envelope, might in theory work if the envelope is large enough, but it would be still rather obvious what is going on.
              • by elucido ( 870205 )

                In that case, Freenet won't really work in places like China.

                They will KNOW who is using Freenet through traffic analysis, and they'll know whether or not Freenet is capable of Steganography and use Steganalysis. In theory on paper it could work, but Freenet would have to be perfectly designed, meaning it would have to be designed much better than it is designed now, and it would probably be harder to scale. It might be that something like Mute will end up being better than Freenet from a design perspective
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )

        Freenet will, by design, underperform a normal straight connection so there is a strong disincentive for legit content to use it.

        That's almost true. Your node caches all content that passes through it, even that which your neighbor nodes have requested. Once it's cached, retrieval is almost instantaneous since your browser is fetching it from your own server. Translation: peer with people who share your tastes, and let their browsing habits pre-cache the content that you might also find interesting.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        So, to bootstrap Freenet adoption, we need to invent some nice-sounding excuse for those casual pirates. Something that would sound like a "killer app" for Freenet.

        - Hey, you're running Freenet, you must be a filthy pedophile!

        - Calm down, I'm just using it for [safer banking / private chat / business talk / foreign news]

        What would be good legitimate candidates for that list? What kind of legitimate content / communication should really enjoy the advantages of Freenet once it becomes popular?

      • It's worse. There ain't no such thing as a 'darknet' to your ISP. If you are in the sort of place that needs Freenet you can be certain your ISP will report you to the government for using freenet.
        Is Freenet usage that easy to spot? My impression was that it would only appear as encrypted traffic.
        • by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) *
          > My impression was that it would only appear as encrypted traffic.

          Exactly. Large regular encrypted traffoc between a set of 'end points' on the Internet. That will stick out like the proverbial turd in a punchbowl to anyone with a clue. Legit encrypted traffic will be intermittent to big web servers or VPN links into large corporate networks. With just a little traffic analysis the suspicious stuff will pop out easily.

          Map a few dozen cable/dsl links doing bulk encrypted traffic amongst themselves an
    • Re:Freedom (Score:4, Interesting)

      by paganizer ( 566360 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `1evorgeht'> on Monday March 31, 2008 @05:44PM (#22925254) Homepage Journal
      I bet I'm going to get labeled troll.
      Freenet 0.7+ is not secure. they gave anonymity and privacy up when they went with the Darknet concept.
      With a Darknet, if you compromise one machine, or even just do traffic monitoring, you can easily determine other members of the Darknet; anonymity is just not there.
      The old system, Freenet up to 0.5 (which is still alive and well, and might even have more users than 0.7) is an OpenNet; all you can tell about a person by monitoring traffic is that they are, indeed, using Freenet. even on a seized computer, You can not really tell who the people that person talks to are; you can only tell which other freenet nodes the persons computer has talked to, and that gives no clue as to the person identity. it can, theoretically, give clues (assuming a vast network of computers is trying to track someones identity) that a node is statistically likely to be someone you are looking for. But thats it.
      No one who is sticking with 0.5 has a clue why the Freenet Developers are doing this, when it's so obviously a flawed concept. Conspiracy theories abound.
      • Re:Freedom (Score:5, Informative)

        by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Monday March 31, 2008 @06:30PM (#22925692)

        If you don't like darknet mode, don't use it. 0.7 has both darknet and opennet available.

        There are lots of reasons why darknets are better, but if you'd rather use an opennet instead no one is stopping you. You can get to the network either way.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Sanity ( 1431 )
        With Freenet 0.5 you are essentially broadcasting to the world that you are using Freenet. With Freenet 0.7's darknet mode, they can only determine you are running Freenet if they compromise one of your friends. Now sure, that is possible, but it requires much more effort on their part. The only reason Freenet 0.5 works at all is that it has virtually no users.
    • Freenet may be fine and good, but from what I'm seeing, privacy advocates are unhappy with where it is going. That make Tor a more logical system, as it is anonymous, whereas Freenet 0.7 is not. Freenet also has a reputation for being slow and unpredictable, which makes disseminating critical information tortuous and/or unreliable. Encrypted bittorrents are going to be able to deliver the same content, faster and with greater robustness.

      This is not to say Freenet is useless, or even that the allegations a

  • Umm thats not new, and for a while that is ALL it would do. For a time they removed the concept of 'opennet'. Id say the key feature is opennet is back.. .
  • your Freenet node will only talk to other Freenet users that you trust

    how solid a foundation is that in the real world? the relationships you build in face-to-face contact are fragile enough. as a darknet expands how do you maintain confidence that it is still secure?

    • Treat your node like you treat your social security number or telephone number. You don't give it to complete strangers right?

      But if you know a person and trust them, then it makes sense. You should be able to trust your friends at least alittle bit.
  • They yet have to invent a net that survives the slashdot effect...
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Perseid ( 660451 )
      Yeah. Trying to connect to their web page feels an awful lot like trying to use Freenet.

The means-and-ends moralists, or non-doers, always end up on their ends without any means. -- Saul Alinsky

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