Show HN: Lahana – my VPN to Tor gateway script for EC2 Free-tier users

http://lahana.dreamcats.org/

by _b8r0 • 13 years ago

43 19 13 years ago

lahana.dreamcats.org

_b8r010• 13 years ago

Some of you may have read or taken part in the discussion about what's going on in Turkey right now. This is my side project to help people build VPNs using Tor with the free tier. I hope it's helpful not just to Turks but to other people. I could really do with help setting up connectivity guides and also with people translating guides into Turkish, Kurdish and any other regional languages used by people in affected areas.

Any help you can offer would be gratefully appreciated.

jtome6• 13 years ago

Why not just setup tor bridges/relays? Is the advantage of this that it can be easily used with an iPhone? It seems like this is rather unsafe since the Turkish government can just set up lahana nodes, sniff the traffic before it goes to tor, while knowing who exactly is sending it.

_b8r010• 13 years ago

It's not perfect, it's meant to be easily shareable which precludes using certificates.

Lahana nodes don't talk to each other and people should set stronger passwords and secrets (although I think I'll set a more secure default).

Part of the advantage is that this will work with pretty much any VPN client and doesn't need Tor installing locally. It's also incredibly easy for an end user to connect to. The problem at the moment isn't that people are being identified in Turkey, the problem is that some people are seeing things blocked. This has actually gone on for a while with stupid things like Youtube being blocked.

Lahana doesn't give you secrecy, it just (in theory) makes it harder to track back from the far end (by using tor), provides direct access to tor without needing to install anything and (hopefully) lets you bypass filtering.

I would not recommend Lahana for anyone where being identified could cause serious harm. But I do welcome any ideas/help on trying to make Lahana better.

ryalfalpha2• 13 years ago

Yes, as far as I've heard,

  VPN -> TOR = DANGER, 
  TOR -> VPN = PROBABLY_OK

You should probably make the 'Lahana is not super secure' really BIG and BOLD for the reader so they can understand their risk.

_b8r010• 13 years ago

If you want to try connecting to a Lahana server without setting up your own node, try this:

Username: bob

Password: bob

Secret: whoop

Hostname: ec2-50-19-10-247.compute-1.amazonaws.com

There's a guide for iOS users[1], I haven't got round to posting a guide for Windows and Mac OSX yet.

[1] http://lahana.dreamcats.org/ios-howto/

_b8r010• 13 years ago

If you create a Lahana node, please post the details in the Lahananodes subreddit[1] so others can use it. It's a bit late in the evening in Turkey but I'm trying to get some nodes up for when people come online in the morning. If you can run a node, please do!

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/lahananodes/

jtome6• 13 years ago

Sorry, maybe you can explain this to me, but I don't understand what advantage does this has over Tor Bridges?

_b8r010• 13 years ago

The purpose of Lahana is to provide a free method of bypassing filtering that almost anyone can implement and anyone can use. It's not meant to provide secrecy, it just gets you past the first hurdle of the filter and gives you tor as an option for a destination.

The reason for using tor is to make it so the source is not directly identifiable to surveillance tools unless the user uses the connection insecurely (e.g. runs bittorrent or has browser leaks). There is the added bonus of being able to access tor without having to install anything on your device.

Tor bridges are fantastic, but for people on mobile devices that don't run android or aren't jailbroken this isn't an option. Lahana opens this up to people running unjailbroken iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone.

Show HN: Lahana – my VPN to Tor gateway script for EC2 Free-tier users

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