While these tools were created to help citizens of countries with ISP-level content filtering/blocking (eg China), you'll find they can come in very handy even in a place like Australia.. especially with our own ISP-level filtering being trialled and implemented on some ISPs. You might also, theoretically, want to use these to encrypt data sent over certain ports.. oh, I dunno.. maybe for programs like uTorrent? Hypothetically of course.
Apps like GTunnel will also help if you work in an office, or go to a college/uni, that has content blocking enabled. It won't work with -all- the censorhip methods out there, but give it a shot and you might be suprised.
GTunnel
GTunnel is a Windows application that works as a local HTTP or SOCKS
proxy server. After setting proxy to GTunnel in web browser or other
Internet applications, the traffic will go through GTunnel and our
server farm before it reaches its original destination.
GTunnel protects Internet users' privacy and freedom of speech in these ways:
- User's IP address is hidden and user's Internet privacy protected. The destination servers see GTunnel server addresses instead.
- Traffic content is encrypted with industry-strength algorithms
between the user's PC and GTunnel servers so the local
filtering/censorship systems will not see the content in clear-text
format.
- Blockade of target servers circumvented.
Download GTunnel client software at http://gardennetworks.org/download.
Features:
- Easy to use user interface, English-Chinese dual language support, automatic recognition of OS language
- Local HTTP/Socks5 proxy (UDP is not supported yet) with intelligent recognition of HTTP/Socks5 protocol
- Automatic configuration of both global (system-wide) and per-instance proxy setting in Internet Explorer
- Support multiple transport modes to provide high service
availability and flexibility in various network environment. In the
standard mode, GTunnel will connect to servers of our server farm
directly. In Skype Mode, GTunnel will try to connect via the P2P (Peer
To Peer) network of Skype. In Tor mode, GTunnel connects throuph Tor
nodes and adds security to Tor users. In GTunnel Tor mode, even the Tor
exit node owners do not see the original traffic.
- Automatic software upgrade
- 128 bit industry strength data encryption with highly randomized traffic pattern
- Runs on Linux through Wine.
UltraSurfUltraSurf is a flagship anti-censorship product by UltraReach Internet Corp. (www.ultrareach.com).
UltraSurf
- enables users inside countries with heavy Internet censorship to visit any public web sites in the world safely and freely
- works together with the GIFT (a dynamic node-proxy anti-jamming system);
- requires no installation or change in system setting;
UltraSurf is a green software, no installation process is needed and
no change in system setting is required. It is simply an executable
file on Windows platform.
UltraSurf’s Chinese name, Wujie – meaning borderless – has become a
household name among Chinese Internet users. UltraSurf is one of the
“three swordsmen,” thanks partly to its user friendliness and user
support in Chinese.
UltraSurf is a robust anti-censorship system evolved from the
lasting battle between GFW and UltraReach. Since infancy, UltraSurf has
been one of the Chinese Communists’ favorite targets. The freely
available software has been analyzed, mutilated and spoofed, and the
supporting network infrastructure has been constantly attacked. Without
doubt, these factors have accelerated UltraSurf reaching its level of
sophistication and fame. The current release, UltraSurf 8.8, has
implemented a complex proxy system with complete transparency and a
high level of encryption on the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)
platform.
UltraSurf enables users to browse any website freely--just the same
as using the regular IE browser--while it automatically searches the
fastest proxy servers in the background. It has strong support for load
balancing and fault tolerance, and it even employs a decoying mechanism
to thwart any tracing effort of its communication with its
infrastructure.
UltraReach Internet Corp. (www.ultrareach.com),
an Internet technology company founded by a group of Silicon Valley
technologists. Since 2002, UltraReach has focused its core business on
developing anti-censorship technologies, and the current release of its
anti-censorship software is UltraSurf 8.8. UltraReach has been
expanding its offerings based on its unique GIFT (Global Internet
Freedom Technology) platform, and today it is also providing a secure
email service called UltraMail, and a protected web portal for users in
China, UltraReach.net (or www.wujie.net).
FreegateFreeGate is an anti-censorship software for secure and fast Internet
access. It was developed and maintained by Dynamic Internet Technology
Inc. (DIT: www.dit-inc.us), a pioneer in censorship-circumvention operation.
- users access web sites overseas as fast as their local ones;
- requires no installation or change in system setting;
- a single executable file on a Windows platform.
FreeGate works by tapping into an anti-censorship backbone, DynaWeb, DIT's P2P-like proxy network system.
FreeGate's anti-censorship capability is further enhanced by a new,
unique encryption and compression algorithm in the versions of 6.33 and
above.
Download the current FreeGate Client Software at
http://us.dongtaiwang.com/loc/download_en.php.
DynaWeb is a collection of anti-censorship services provided by Dynamic Internet Technology Inc. (DIT).
DynaWeb is a web-based anti-censorship portal. Once users point their
web browser at one of the DynaWeb URLs, a web page will be presented
similar to the one at us.dongtaiwang.com,
with most blocked websites as links. In addition, a user can type in
any URL in the box on this page and DynaWeb will fetch the pages for
him/her instantly. No software is needed, nor are any settings tweaked
on a user’s computer. But since the Chinese net police watch DynaWeb’s
portal websites closely and block them as soon as they identify them,
DynaWeb must indeed be very dynamic. It has hundreds of mirror sites at
anytime, and each with a varying IP and DNS domain name, to defeat IP
blocking and DNS hijacking. On the backstage, DynaWeb also has
mechanisms to proactively monitor the blocking status of each of its
mirror sites, and as soon as blocking is detected, it will change the
IP and DNS domain name instantly.
To keep users connected to such a dynamic infrastructure, DynaWeb
has a variety of channels to keep users updated. For example, a user
can send a message to one of DynaWeb’s instant messenger (IM) accounts,
and will get an instant reply showing the newest addresses of DynaWeb
portals. Similar things are being done with emails. By these many,
dynamic channels, DynaWeb outsmarts any attempt to collect all DynaWeb
addresses by the censors, because each user receives only a (different)
subset of DynaWeb’s addresses. Automatic blocking detection combined
with quick reaction apparently frustrates the blocking efforts on the
China side of the GFW.
DIT also releases a tiny piece of software, FreeGate, which directly
taps into DynaWeb’s backbone and keeps a user connected to the dynamic
channels automatically. There are indications that FreeGate has some
capabilities built-in to exploit some zero-day vulnerabilities of the
GFW.
DIT was founded originally in 2001 to provide email delivery
services to China for U.S. government agencies and NGOs. In 2002, DIT
started to provide anti-censorship services under the framework of
DynaWeb, and like UltraSurf, DynaWeb became a top contender of the
GFW-penetration effort. The battle between DynaWeb and GFW has been
thrilling, dynamic and dramatic, albeit largely invisible to the
general public. Today DynaWeb offers the widest range of options for
users to access Internet freely, and supports more than 50 million web
hits per day on average from Chinese users alone.
In addition to its DynaWeb service, DIT has released numerous
advisories and technical analyses of the evolving Internet censorship
operations [http://dit-inc.us/press_release].
XAMPP Lite
