Allium Cepa Amazonia

June 3, 2013 11:02 AM

Wondering how you can help Mefites in Turkey or other trouble hotspots when the filters start coming down? "Lahana is my little side project to help people access the Internet and Tor via Amazon EC2 free tier-based VPNs. It's a couple of scripts that set up a new VPN in a couple of minutes that automatically tunnels everything through Tor. It's easy to share credentials with groups of people and for most people is free to set up and use. I built it with Turkey in mind, but it no doubt has other uses."

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posted by jaduncan (3 comments total)

"If you’re worried about being identified, use Tor instead if you can. If you’re worried about being blocked, use Lahana," says its creator.

So Lahana uses Tor but it's not Tor and it's less secure than Tor is to the extent that the creator warns everyone clearly that they should use Tor instead if they need something secure.

The worry here is that someone who really ought to be using Tor will misunderstand the distinction, use this instead, and suffer extremely serious consequences.

Even the text of the FPP appears to conflate the two.

It's extremely well-meant and good luck to everyone involved at every level, but the conflation of things is worrying.
posted by motty at 11:58 AM on June 3, 2013

Yeah, I'll be clear here and say this is as secure as the way you transfer the credentials to the end user. If the password and secret are divulged to a third party then things become compromised.
posted by jaduncan at 12:28 PM on June 3, 2013

In fact, since this wasn't clear enough in the FPP or link I've contacted the mods to kill this.
posted by jaduncan at 12:32 PM on June 3, 2013