About Security

Publication Date: 4.04.2024

People all over the world are increasingly faced with the situation when the Internet resources they need are blocked. Such blockages can be divided into two types:

By internet traffic regulators at the company or country level
By services that restrict access to their resources for residents of certain countries

VPN ^Wiki is most often used to bypass such blockages. Originally VPN is a technology for connecting computers into a virtual local area network using encrypted communication channels in the internet. Usually VPN is used in large companies to connect territorially remote divisions and devices of individual employees into a single virtual network.

There are many modifications of VPN but all of them provide:

the ability to transfer data between computers in a virtual network as if they were connected via local area network
secure data transfer through the internet

Thereby the idea of using VPN to get access to blocked resources seems attractive because data is transferred through the internet in an encrypted form and so it is difficult for regulators to analyze traffic, understand what resources you visit and block it. At the same time resources that you visit through VPN are not able to determine who is trying to access them and from where, which also makes blocking difficult.

But there are two important nuances:

Concerning the confidentiality of transferred data, on the VPN server data is decrypted and becomes readable, which means that VPN server must be accessed by someone you trust.
Concerning the operability and reliability of the technology in general, data that is transferred through the internet between virtual network members may be recognizable, which means that such traffic can be detected and blocked.

Fortunately, there are enthusiasts and companies specializing in developing technical solutions for bypassing internet censorship. One of such companies, Jigsaw , offers an elegant solution to the problem of data confidentiality. It is to give users the opportunity to create their own VPN server and use it to access the internet. Jigsaw project, realizing this opportunity, is called Outline .

The Outline project provides three components:

server software to be installed on a PC running Linux OS for later use as a proxy server ^Wiki
the Outline Manager application to manage a server
and the Outline Client application to establish a connection with a server by Shadowsocks protocol ^Wiki

This software is distributed as an open source software. Anyone can check it out and make sure that users data, including the addresses of the resources they visit, are reliably protected even from the owners of VPN‑servers and Jigsaw members. If you have ideas for making Outline more efficient, join the project at GitHub: Jigsaw‑Code ^GitHub.

The Shadowsocks data transfer protocol was also developed by one of the anti‑censorship enthusiasts, a Chinese programmer with the nickname Clowwindy and a group of like‑minded people, basing on SOCKS 5 ^Wiki protocol, and it is also distributed open source ^GitHub. The description of how Shadowsocks protocol prevents identification of traffic as to be blocked is outside the scope of this article. If you wish, you can find materials on this topic on the protocol website . Here we just note, that the use of Shadowsocks is one of the few methods to bypass the Great Firewall of China ^Wiki and it essentially solves the issue of operability and reliability in using VPN to bypass internet censorship.

To use Outline the way Jigsaw team suggests, the following steps need to be taken:

rent a server from one of the hosting service providers (from $6 per month on DigitalOcean)
connect to the server through SSH ^Wiki using console and install Jigsaw server software with a single command
install the Outline Manager application on a device with Windows/MacOS/Linux to create access keys on Shadowsocks/SOCKS 5 server
install the Outline Client application on your device to connect to the server using one of these keys

This approach largely solves the problem of confidentiality of transmitted data. But though Outline greatly simplifies the process of setting up your own VPN server, it may still seem quite costly in terms of time and money.

We strive to provide an equally secure, but more affordable way to bypass blocking, for which we do the following:

renting servers from reliable hosting providers all over the world
installing Jigsaw server software on them unchanged
testing server throughput and generating access keys so that each key speed is at least 20 Mbps
providing the opportunity to purchase these keys at a price of $2.5 for one key per month to use them to access blocked resources through such applications as Outline Client , Shadowsocks Client and others .

Thus, the use of keys purchased on our service is one of the safest methods to bypass internet censorship that does not require you to set up your own VPN server. When using our service, your data, including your browsing history, is securely protected and is not available to us or Jigsaw team. And the likelihood that a potential regulator will identify your traffic as unwanted and block it, remains very low.

Methods of censoring resources on the internet do not stand still, but along with them, censorship circumvention methods are also developing. To date, circumvention methods are winning and this is unlikely to change in the near future. Ultimately, the right to freedom of information and freedom of speech is guaranteed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ^UN and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ^UN, PDF. It is sad that despite these guarantees, we are forced to look for the methods to combat censorship, but one cannot but rejoice that such methods have been found and are available to everyone.

About Security

Publication Date: 4.04.2024