A proxy idea

BerntB has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello!

I had an idea for a http proxy program that would be hard to censure; work name ChiranGW (China-Iran Gateway). The modules should probably be beneath the HTTP::Proxy hierarchy.

My solution is more social than technical. :-)

I want to both make installations hard to find with web spiders and make the traffic hard to recognize for gateways. Also, many web servers needs to install the program so there will be too many to easily filter addresses.

To reach those goals, I aim for these features:

Very easy to install.
Asking people to change the little html needed so installs will be very heterogenous.
Use many different encryption and steganography algorithms by plugins.
Lower speed than for normal anon proxies.

So it is used only by those that need it.
Inexpensive to install on host websites.

Lots of hype to get the program installed in a few thousand places! :-)

I (-: think I :-) know how to do the code. I'll of course be happy to discuss the implementation if anyone is curious, but this is too long as it is.

My questions (sorry for being mostly OT re Perl).

(a) Cache::FileCache and HTTP::Proxy seems really neat; any problems or alternative solutions I should be aware of?
(b) Are proxies for e.g. China a solved problem and I should just do something else? :-)
(c) Item (5) above -- I have no clue. But that part is in no hurry.
(d) Any advice for simple rate limitation? Just limiting the number of proxy transfers per second? Or sleep a few seconds at the start of all calls?

(-: And... if any civil servants from "relevant" countries reads this and believe it might work, make a money offer and I'll get another hobby... I will call the police if you threaten me or my relatives. :-)

Comment on A proxy idea

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Re: A proxy idea by marto (Cardinal) on Jul 05, 2005 at 14:57 UTC
Hi, An interesting idea. Something you may want to consider is the non technical issues of something like this. Please have a read at how to direct traffic via my web space?, where merlyn points out an issue which I failed to consider before posting advice. Just my 2c Martin	[reply]
Re^2: A proxy idea by BerntB (Deacon) on Jul 05, 2005 at 16:31 UTC
Thanks for the answer! The article was voted down. That makes me doubt I could write something like this and get it installed onto lots of normal websites. I guess it would mostly be used for illegal porn anyway (say, pederasts here and close ups of ancles in Iran :-). Sigh, one idea for version 2 would have been a gateway to one of those encrypted p-t-p networks. Then people reading Amnesty International and hrw.org in China would have been mixed up with people copying boring pop music. I try to not go to dictatorships for vacation, so it wouldn't be that much of a loss if I couldn't go to China, Iran or Cuba (even though a dream vacation would be to eat myself through the restaurants of the Schezuan province... :-)	[reply]
Re: A proxy idea by jhourcle (Prior) on Jul 06, 2005 at 03:11 UTC
You might be duplicating effort http://tor.eff.org/	[reply]
Re^2: A proxy idea by BerntB (Deacon) on Jul 06, 2005 at 04:26 UTC
That was a serious project! Thank you for the link. But the protocols in those kinds of networks are quite easy to recognize when leaving the controlled zone, yes? (-: Then you might get a visit like in the movie Brazil! :-) My goals was to make it hard to automatically recognize the protocol and the content being sent over. Tor is done for use in the "open", non-censured net. A harder, but a bit different, problem. But Tor as a backend would be really neat...	[reply]