The Darknet Alternatives
From
warmfuzzy@700:100/37 to
All on Sun Sep 22 03:05:25 2024
The Darknet in Threes
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Hyhphanet (formerly The Freenet Project), The Onion Router (TOR) , and The Invisible Internet Project (I2P)
The Darknets serve different purposes. Hyphanet is mostly for blogs or freenet pages that allow you to attach files to those pages. The Onion Router is mostly about accessing the clear web using "exit nodes," though it can also support "hidden sites" where you can traverse from one TOR node to anohter without leaving the TOR network. The Invisible Internet Project is fully internal to the I2P network. I2P is the most advanced system, allowing the hosting of any arbitrary server platforms. You just need to install the server you want online on the I2P Darknet and the socket that you make can be shared with whoever on the network. So you may run an SFTP server, an IRC Server, a Web Server, literally any server can be attached to the I2P network, you just direct the linked server via its address, such as 127.0.0.1, enter the port that the connection is attached to, and with the address and port you can serve up any type of content through the I2P internal network. Anyone connected to the I2P network can access anyone else on the network, but they will need to know the address. If a site owner wants their site to be public they can advertise the site on one of the site listings.
The most popular Darknet service is by far is the TOR network (The Onion Router). This is for a few reasons: you can just run the TAILS operating system, wait two minutes for the nodelist to populate and you're good to go to surf the TOR Darknet. It is simpler than the other two. TOR is subsidized by the American Department of Defense (DoD), who use the system to allow their operatives to chat securely from any place in the world to any other place in the world, and securely.
Hyphanet has gone through many changes in its development. Without going really in-depth with their changes you can simply know that the whole system has been rewritten several times. Hyphanet has been massively DoS'd (having Denial of Service attacks) against its services. Becase the system has been such a big target for law enforcement the system is now massively hardened against bad actors and malcontents. Due to the nature of the Hyphanet architecture you can publish a "Free Site" and that site will be there "forever" as it has a mechanism of retaining all the sites that are actively visited, and the more visits a site has the more deeply ingrained the site will go into the Hyphanet store and forward retrieval system.
For the most elite work, the Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is the most well suited, for serious work that requires maximum protection. For common anonomyzed clearnet browsing then I'd suggest The Onion Router (I2P). And Hyphanet takes third alternative, being the best for long term storage that doesn't need touching, so long as people still visit the site it will be integrated into the network groupwise file server that is a part of every node. Just about all users are a part of the globally distributed file archive. So the following are my assessment of the Darknet Services:
Easy to Use: (1) TOR, (2) Hyphanet, (3) I2P
Security: (1) I2P, (2) TOR, (3) Hyphanet
Hacker Population: (1) TOR, (2) I2P, (3) Hyphanet
Pervert Population: (1) Hyphanet, (2) TOR, (3) I2P
Speed: (1) TOR, (2) I2P, (3) Hyphanet
Survilled: (1) Hyphanet, (2) TOR, (3) I2P
The Warmfuzzy Perspective:
All of these networks are surveiled by someone somewhere. I would suggest using a VPN (virtual private network) before connecting with any of these services as the Western Nations are actively snooping on all IP's that are associated with the Darknet networks. In another post I'll describe a real life incident of cops sitting in a church's driveway while my friend and I were playing games and surfing Freenet---but that is for another post.
Darknets are highly valuable assets for the personal protection of privacy and the promotion of open and free journalism with an anonymizing layer that keeps your free speech protected from violence against the posters. In my opinion it is worthwhile to check out the Darknet services, but don't go looking too deep into it or you will find disgusting material that you can't "un-see." I think that from the perspective of a student who is seeking knowledge and understanding this is a reasonable venue to learn more about privacy and its implementation. Now remember, don't go to any sites that you wouldn't want your mom to see you visiting. There are many ways to determine what you are looking at using different methods than simply cracking encryption. So if your mom wouldn't want you to view a certain page then don't visit it. Getting corrupted is a dark time. Don't get corrupted and tread softly.
Cheers!
-warmfuzzy
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From
zharvek@700:100/27 to
All on Sun Sep 22 19:11:48 2024
On 9/21/24 11:05 PM, warmfuzzy wrote:
Hyhphanet (formerly The Freenet Project), The Onion Router (TOR) , and The Invisible Internet Project (I2P)
Nice post! Check out Yggdrasil, while it's not designed to be secure
from locating a node (although it's still not easy) its designed as a
private IPv6 network most similar to I2P.
Anyone can use Yggdrasil and host internal services, or they can use it
as a simple VPN solution to connect their servers and such together if
your stuck behind CGNAT. There is no public internet routing unless a
specific person does so manually with other software projects.
Check it out Mr. Warmfuzzy!
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