Skip to main content

Blocking Communication - Breaking Out


I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it
If you have been following my previous post you will realize how quickly a state actor can just disrupt any kind of communication relying on a centralized telecom authority or Internet Service providers. Anything that can be threatened technically and legally can and will be used to block access to the Internet and communication mediums. Hence we need a solution that can circumvent these hurdles.
This blog post is inspired by the recent events happening at Kashmir, India and how repeatedly state actors in different parts of globes using laws to curb access to freedom of speech.

I present to you today: NoConnect

The idea first was envisioned at a Mozilla Leadership Summit back in 2015 at Singapore along with Priyanka Nag and a few more people(whom I don't remember anymore :( ). Then it took two years for it to come out to a prototype stage. And now this is in a stable enough stage where you can use this to reliably communicate with each other.

What is NoConnect

NoConnect is a real-time messaging application like WhatsApp which does not rely on any traditional GSM/CDMA network or any kind of internet service to communicate with each other unlike WhatsApp.

Motivation:

This was primarily envisioned to be used by NGO's and rescue workers and victims in areas where cellular and telecom communications have broken down. And the only way to connect and communicate is by Satelite Phones. This app could transform every mobile device to an off the grid communication device which does not need any kind of network.

The idea was heavily inspired by Gotenna Mesh without the need for any dedicated costly hardware.

Features

  • off the grid: NoConnect doesn't need any internet or mobile network to communicate. Each mobile device with the app installed acts as a node and connects with each other using wifi and Bluetooth p2p network
  • temp users: All the users and usernames are disposable. Since it's not stored in any server or network. It's bound only to the device
  • encrypted: data streams between devices are encrypted
  • p2p network support: if you are part of a p2p swarm. You can communicate with everyone in that swarm even if they are not within your Wifi/Bluetooth range
The swarm makes it perfect for communicating between communities. And the nature of the network makes it resilient to any kind of censorship or attacks on the interception of messages.
A short guide on how it works



This was later submitted to the Equal Rating Innovation challenge and listed under the Technology section.

India Version:

I have just released a prebuilt binary which you should be able to just install and use right now in any Android Device. The release note gives a few more specific features probably relevant to the present scenario. I will also list them out here:
  • Complete off the grid communication. Does not need any network (GSM/CDMA) or internet at all. Useful for situations where communication Blackdown is active
  • Supports message broadcast. Useful for quickly sharing information to everyone
  • Complete anonymous messaging. You choose your username and it doesn't have to be unique. Not tied to any phone number or any information. If you are concerned, just remove your sim card and then use it. Will work fine
  • Censorship Resistant: Communications are end to end encrypted and completely off the grid. No way to monitor, intercept or block communication
  • This version is backdated. You will manually change the date to two years back (2017) and it will work. The moment your network comes back alive and if you think you are under attack. the moment the date changes the app will lock itself regardless of if you give a password or not.

Download Here


This post will be updated with the technical specification of the mesh network and how NoConnect works. And also some more changes that are being worked on for the India version of the app.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FirefoxOS, A keyboard and prediction: Story of my first contribution

Returning to my cubical holding a hot cup of coffee and with a head loaded with frustration and panic over a system codebase that I managed to break with no sufficient time to fix it before the next morning.  This was at IBM, New York where I was interning and working on the TJ Watson project. I returned back to my desk, turned on my dual monitors, started reading some blogs and engaging on Mozilla IRC (a new found and pretty short lived hobby). Just a few days before that, FirefoxOS was launched in India in the form of an Intex phone with a $35 price tag. It was making waves all around, because of its hefty price and poor performance . The OS struggle was showing up in the super low cost hardware. I was personally furious about some of the shortcomings, primarily the keyboard which at that time didn’t support prediction in any language other than English and also did not learn new words. Coincidentally, I came upon Dietrich Ayala in the FirefoxOS IRC channel, who...
Read more

April Fool and Google Part 2: A Round Up of ALL of Google’s April Fools Jokes

Ok....this post I think will contain all of the pranks I could find  for today. After my last post here http://rkrants.blogspot.com/2012/04/april-fool-and-google-my-favorite.html Last Time I reported Only a handful of the pranks.. Understandable, as it was only the morning. After that I stumbled upon more of them Which I am gonna round up here. Now staring with the list. The very first one is obviously our favourite Google Maps Quest The above is their official video. In a post in Google Plus they say about it as follows  Today  + Google Maps  announced Google Maps 8-bit for NES. With #8bitmaps , you can do everything you'd normally do in Maps—search for famous landmarks and sites around the world, get directions and even use Street View. Just in time for April Fool's Day, Google has introduced Google Maps Quest, a retro 8-bit version of its mapping tool that is... totally awesome. In a characteristically whimsical video, availabl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Curious case of Cisco AnyConnect and WSL2

One thing Covid has taught me is the importance of VPN. Also one other thing COVID has taught me while I work from home  is that your Windows Machine can be brilliant  as long as you have WSL2 configured in it. So imagine my dismay when I realized I cannot access my University resources while being inside the University provided VPN client. Both of the institutions I have affiliation with, requires me to use VPN software which messes up WSL2 configuration (which of course I realized at 1:30 AM). Don't get me wrong, I have faced this multiple times last two years (when I was stuck in India), and mostly I have been lazy and bypassed the actual problem by side-stepping with my not-so-noble  alternatives, which mostly include one of the following: Connect to a physical machine exposed to the internet and do an ssh tunnel from there (not so reliable since this is my actual box sitting at lab desk, also not secure enough) Create a poor man's socks proxy in that same box to have...
Post a Comment
Read more