Kickstarter Cancels Anonabox Funding Campaign

An anonymous reader writes: On Friday, the controversy surrounding Anonabox reached its zenith with Kickstarter officially canceling the project's funding campaign. Anonabox began with a modest goal of $7,500, but quickly reached its goal 82 times over. Then funders and interested parties began to scrutinize the project's claims, and that's when the project ran into trouble. From hardware that wasn't actually custom-made to software that didn't actually fulfill promises of privacy-focused routing on the internet, the facts regarding Anonabox proved that it was in blatant violation of Kickstarter's rules against false advertising. This project clearly failed, but if the support it initially garnered is any indication, the public is hungry for easy-to-use technology that encrypts and anonymizes all personal internet traffic.

Comments

Really?

[Ralph Wiggam]

The guys who said they could create custom hardware for 7,500 bucks were full of shit? I am shocked.

Re:Really?

[wierd_w]

The internet was not designed to prevent eavesdropping either.

Hell, ETHERNET was not designed to prevent it!

If you want a technology to prevent eavesdropping, you need to go ground up quantum crypto over optical fiber or something.

Tor is basically security through obscurity anyway. However, it is still more difficult to intercept and piece together than naked, unfiltered traffic, which is what a normal router offers.

Basically, what I am pointing out is that your argument is absurd. TOR was attacked by governments, not from within the TOR network, but by observing the traffic going into and out of its exit nodes. That is because the traffic going in and out was unencumbered at that point, because it has to talk with the regular internet. Coupled with other forensic techniques, the powers that be were able to deduce a great deal about who sent what packets through TOR.

ANY APPLIANCE WOULD SUFFER THIS ISSUE.
THE INTERNET ITSELF DOES NOT PREVENT EAVESDROPPING.

Instead, the best you can do is make the message meaningless to the one who is eavesdropping. That is encryption. Even better if you use encrypted packets with a randomized route. This means that eavesdroppers will only get a few of the packets, and will not have enough data to attack the message contents.

Encryption that is worth a shit requires a beefy FPU. That's why I pointed out that current COTS routers aren't a good fit exactly-- normal packet routing does not require FPU function. However, as data security on the internet becomes more and more a requirement, and less and less of a simple paranoia thing-- (and as cost of manufacture for SoC systems comes down and economies of scale interject into the market for SoCs) then home routers with real hardfloat will emerge. At that time, it really would be possible to have a consumer device in your house that does the data fiddling for you.

Again, your objection is bullshit. Followed to its conclusion, the internet itself shouldnt be used at all.

SlashDot Is Watching You

[Evan Langlois]

16 Companies Tracking This Page

How bad are people tracking you? Everytime you see a facebook, twitter, or other social media button, a like button, or whatever, that image is tracking you. I'm showing 16 different companies tracking slashdot from google analytics to facebook and twitter to places like taboola and others - some running scripts, some setting cookies. Don't know if any are using web bugs as I haven't checked to see what methods they all use, but this is what keeps slashdot running.

The problem is that every site is doing this. People are no longer customers, but you are now a PRODUCT. People are selling YOU. This isn't what the Internet was designed to be, its not the outpost of freedom we wanted. I am trully disappointed.

Not sure what the fuss is about.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why people were mad about the hardware in this whole ordeal. Who gives a shit if it looks like something else or he used stock photos?

This device was never ever going to be anything but the cheapest and most practical router SoC they could get their hands on. The things are made in china by the millions and cost less than a buck. Add a little flash and two ethernet jacks and some supporting hardware and you're done. Fuck, there are literally dozens of two port micro routers that are literally this I can go buy on amazon right now. AND they have wifi. Some are even USB powered.

Realistically, they were just going to take an existing micro router reference deisgn and load custom firmware on it. Your typical router SoC has more than enough power to run a tor node.

What would make this project special would be the software stack. Making a tor node that easy to use and still be truly secure would be something of a challenge. Would it really be possible to make an idiot proof automagic tor node that intercepts and redirects traffic?

Sure they do

[Kjella]

People would like a magic box that make them anonymous and secure on the internet while they log into Facebook, just like they want a magic diet pill while they continue to stuff their faces with sugar and fat. Or for a more relevant tech example they'd like a magic oracle to tell them if a website belongs to who they think it belongs to which is why we have CAs as the best approximation. It's never going to work that way, but there's a lot of money in selling snake oil...