2016 – eQualitie

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Deflect Labs report #3

By: dmitri On: December 14, 2016 Deflect Labs, DDoS Comments Disabled

Botnet attack analysis of Deflect protected website blacklivesmatter.com Seamus Tuohy and eQualit.ie View the report with 3D rendering (5mb) This report covers attacks between April 29th and October 15th, 2016. Over this seven-month period, we recorded more than a hundred separate denial-of-service incidents against the official Black Lives Matter website. Our analysis shows a variety […]

Deflect Stats November 2016

By: Floriana On: December 13, 2016 DDoS, Blog, Deflect stats Comments Disabled

In November the Deflect network served pages to many legitimate visitors interested in breaking news reported by deflected websites, and mitigated automatically some intense attacks. During the month, Deflect served 585 million pages to 9.8 million visitors, with a slight increase of unique IPs as compared to our October statistics, suggesting a rise in the […]

TA3M, December 19th – the Cryptmas edition

By: dmitri On: December 07, 2016 TA3M Comments Disabled

Our techno activism 3rd Mondays events are back! This time with a focus on mobile security and anonymity. As recent reporting highlighted once again the dangers to personal privacy from modern day surveillance, we are offering an overview of current possibilities for improving your mobile privacy, just in time for Christmas! We will discuss: – […]

Deflect Stats October 2016

By: Floriana On: November 14, 2016 Blog, Deflect stats Comments Disabled

In October Deflect’s metrics kept following the trend we had seen in September, with comparable figures in terms of unique visitors (9.3 million) and a slight increase in total hits (632.8 million requests reaching our edge servers), but with almost twice as many bots identified and banned by Deflect’s banning system – 50,323 bots against […]

Deflect Stats September 2016

By: Floriana On: October 13, 2016 Blog, Deflect stats Comments Disabled

In September, Deflect metrics grew as new websites joined the service and a popular Syrian website rejoined Deflect to ensure an uninterrupted news stream on the regional conflict. In other news, the Internet witnessed the largest ever DDoS attacks, surpassing 600gbps and then 1 terabyte of traffic per second. These events followed the leaks of […]

Deflect Stats August 2016

By: Floriana On: September 12, 2016 Blog, Deflect stats Comments Disabled

“No news is good news” in the DDoS mitigation game, and this is what we were hoping for in August 2016. We decided to capitalize on this opportunity and focus the team on new developments supporting free Let’s Encrypt certificates for all Deflect clients, as part of the TLS/HTTPS system. Then, on the 29th everything […]

Deflect Stats July 2016

By: Floriana On: August 03, 2016 Uncategorized, DDoS, Blog, Deflect stats Comments Disabled

From what we can conclude from our statistics, during the month of July bot controllers must have come back from their holidays, since the traffic on the Deflect network has started to increase again and we have witnessed one of the most intense bursts of DDoS attacks we had observed so far. This series of […]

Deflecting cyber attacks against the Black Lives Matter website

By: Floriana On: July 12, 2016 DDoS, Advocacy, Blog Comments Disabled

Last week and throughout the weekend, Deflect helped mitigate several DDoS attack bursts against the official Black Lives Matter website. At current estimates over 12,000 bots pounded the website just over 35 million times in 24 hours. An unusual trait of this attack was the prevalence of malicious connections originating from the US. An in-depth […]

Deflect Stats June 2016

By: Floriana On: July 01, 2016 Blog, Deflect stats Comments Disabled

If any conclusion can be drawn in comparing this month’s statistics with the rest of the year, it’s probably that hot weather is also discouraging to those bot controllers launching DDoS attacks! The month was rather uneventful on the malicious side of things, but the team worked in earnest to improve our mitigation mechanisms, including threat […]

Deflect Stats May 2016

By: Floriana On: June 07, 2016 Blog, Deflect stats Comments Disabled

May 2016 was an interesting month for Deflect. We began the month with two intense attacks that required our team’s intervention right in the middle of May Day. After this, the month unrolled with a series of smaller attacks against the same websites, which were by then automatically mitigated by the Deflect network without requiring […]

Deflect Labs Report #2

By: dmitri On: June 02, 2016 DDoS, Blog, Deflect Labs Comments Disabled

Botnet attack analysis of Deflect protected website bdsmovement.net This report covers attacks between February 1st and March 31st of six discovered incidents targeting the bdsmovement.net website, including methods of attack, identified botnets and their characteristics. It provides detailed technical information and analysis of trends with the introduction of the Bothound library for attack fingerprinting and […]

Deflect Stats April 2016

By: dmitri On: May 05, 2016 DDoS, Blog, Deflect stats Comments Disabled

April 2016 was noticeable for the amount of attacks launched against Deflect protected websites. Most of them were using the WordPress Pingback reflective attack method. Ukrainian readers topped our statistics this month, with readers from the United States, Ecuador and Russia also generating several million daily hits. An interesting set of data […]

TA3M May ’16 – “Who Am I” Film Screening

By: Floriana On: May 04, 2016 Blog, TA3M Comments Disabled

Join us for the next TA3M for a screening of the German hacker film Who Am I. After the screening we will host a group discussion led by Gabriella Coleman (Professor at McGill University who works on computer hackers) and Thomas Geffroyd (Ubisoft, Content Director for the Hacker game Watchdogs) about the film and the […]

eQPress – secure hosting with Deflect

By: Floriana On: April 29, 2016 Hosting Comments Disabled

In the last few months, the Deflect team has set up a hosting platform that allows anybody to have an easy-to-manage, secure website (or even a multisite) that protects you not only from DDoS attacks, but also from other problems that may arise if your hosting provider is poorly resourced, unable to handle basic attacks […]

Use the Console to manage your eQPress account

By: Floriana On: April 29, 2016 Hosting Comments Disabled

When you first create a website on eQPress, what you need to know is how to configure it and how to use WordPress. But if you’ve ever managed a WordPress-based website or blog and/or have just migrated your existing site to eQPress, you will probably be already familiar with the WordPress Dashboard and don’t need […]

TA3M APRIL ’16 – a Basic Internet Service in Canada?

By: dmitri On: April 13, 2016 TA3M Comments Disabled

Should Canada do more to encourage broadband adoption? The CRTC is currently debating whether to define a basic Internet service and whether to subsidize Internet access to rural, remote or low income communities. For people interested in the information superhighway, this hearing is when the rubber hits the road. Concordia professor Fenwick McKelvey will introduce […]

Deflect stats March 2016

By: dmitri On: April 01, 2016 Blog, Deflect Labs, Deflect stats, DDoS, Advocacy Comments Disabled

This is the first in a monthly series of posts sharing and discussing statistics on the Deflect network. March 2016 was a busy month for us. We began to publish analytic reports on DDoS attacks against some of the clients we protect on the network. Our aim is to help the target’s advocacy efforts and […]

Deflect Labs Report #1

By: Floriana On: March 29, 2016 DDoS, Blog, Deflect Labs, Ukraine Comments Disabled

Botnet attack analysis covering reporting period February 1 – 29 2016 Deflect protected website – kotsubynske.com.ua This report covers attacks against the Kotsubynske independent media news site in Ukraine, in particular during the first two weeks of February 2016. It details the various methods used to bring down the website via distributed denial of service […]

Deflect Labs – fighting impunity with analytics and advocacy

By: dmitri On: March 29, 2016 DDoS, Advocacy, Deflect Labs Comments Disabled

For the last four years, the Deflect DDoS mitigation system has protected independent online voices from the onslaught of cyber-attacks aiming to silence them. We have grown, learning our lessons as we took the punches. One aspect of this work stood out as particularly interesting during this time: there were stories to be told in […]

TA3M MARCH ’16 “WHO BYTES YOUR BITS”

By: dmitri On: March 14, 2016 Blog, TA3M Comments Disabled

We’re all familiar with the idea of a search warrant — but how else can the government access your private information in Canada? This informal TA3M workshop will explore this question—whether in the context of a criminal investigation or otherwise. We’ll also discuss the implications for businesses and organizations that hold private data for their […]

IFF Tool Showcase: the winners!

By: Floriana On: March 04, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

During the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, eQualit.ie hosted a tool showcase on Thursday 3rd March. 15 awesome tools were presented, and the audience voted for their favourite projects for three different categories – “You did whaaaat?”, “Wish I’d thought of that!”, and “You get a biscuit”. We are now proud to announce the winners, […]

IFF Tool Showcase #14: CGIProxy

By: Floriana On: March 03, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

First created in 1996, CGIProxy is a clientless web proxy that supports Javascript and Flash, enabling access even to the most complex websites, and can be used to anonymize connections and circumvent censorship. Over the years, CGIProxy has been downloaded over 2 million times and has been a model for several other similar web proxies. […]

IFF Tool Showcase #15: SecurePost

By: Floriana On: March 03, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

SecurePost is an Android App that allows a group to share a Twitter account or Facebook page without sharing the account password. Every post published through SecurePost is cryptographically signed and can thus be verified through the app itself or with a Chrome plugin, that will clearly show if the post has been published by […]

IFF Tool Showcase #2: Code of Conduct builder

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

Usually, those who are most hurt by censorship, surveillance and a lack of Internet freedom are the most marginalised members of society; people who have been too often excluded from the world of tech, policy and other important areas which impact Internet freedom and human rights. To face this problem, many groups have taken inspiration […]

IFF Tool Showcase #11: StoryMaker

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

StoryMaker is an open source app helping anyone learn to make great multimedia stories and safely produce and publish them with their mobile device, in a privacy-preserving fashion that ensures they can share and publish their stories where they wish, despite the threat of censorship. The final release out of beta comes with the inclusion […]

IFF Tool Showcase #13: uProxy

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

uProxy is an open source browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that lets users share their route to the Internet with each other. uProxy has been made for people in two situations: those who need to get safe and unrestricted access to the Internet and those who have an unrestricted connection that they would like […]

IFF Tool Showcase #6: OnionShare

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

OnionShare is a desktop application to share files anonymously and securely using the Tor network. It’s incredibly simple and uses the anonymity-protecting and firewall-slicing properties of hidden services. It supports a diversity of use cases such as sending a screenshot to a friend, or leaking classified documents to a journalist. As long as both the […]

IFF Tool Showcase #1: CENO

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

CENO (Censorship.NO!) is an innovative approach to censorship circumvention, based on P2P storage networks, and in particular on Freenet. CENO maintains strong privacy and anonymity features as well as offering users plausible deniability in an emergency situation. CENO is built in advance of aggressive Internet filtering and the establishment of national intranets to fence off […]

IFF Tool Showcase #5: NetAidKit

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

The NetAidKit is a pocket size, USB powered router that connects everything to everything, designed specifically for non-technical users. The easy to use web interface will allow you to connect the NetAidKit to a wireless or wired network and share that connection with your other devices, such as a phone, laptop or tablet. Once the […]

IFF Tool Showcase: the projects

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 Blog, IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

During the Internet Freedom Festival, which will take place in Valencia, Spain, from the 1st to the 6th March 2016, eQualit.ie will host a tool showcase and award ceremony on Thursday 3rd March, starting from 7 pm. During the showcase, 15 tools will be introduced with a short presentation to the entire room and then […]

IFF Tool Showcase #12: Umbrella

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

Umbrella is a free and open source Android app to help journalists and activists manage their security on the move. Subdivided in several sections addressing not only digital and physical, but also psycho-social and operational security issues, Umbrella offers simple, practical advice on what to do and what tools to do it with – covering […]

IFF Tool Showcase #10: StingWatch

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

An IMSI-catcher is a telephony eavesdropping device used for intercepting mobile phone traffic and tracking movement of mobile phone users. Essentially a “fake” mobile tower acting between the target mobile phone and the service provider’s real towers, it is considered a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack. Wikipedia article Employed, among others, by the US federal government and […]

IFF Tool Showcase #9: Qubes OS

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

Qubes OS is a free and open source security-oriented operating system that implements security by compartmentalization. Its architecture is built to enable a user to define different security environments on her computer and visually manage their interaction with each other. While the most common operating systems like Windows, Mac or Linux are “monolithic”, which means […]

IFF Tool Showcase #8: Psiphon

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

Psiphon is a free censorship circumvention tool. Its robust network is made of more than thousand active servers, which can provide you with quick access to any blocked content on the Internet. Psiphon is an open source tool that does not require installation and automatically selects the best performance settings. More than 15 million people […]

IFF Tool Showcase #4: FreedomBox

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

FreedomBox is a personal server that protects your privacy. It is a free software stack, a subset of the Debian universal operating system, that can be installed in many flavors of inexpensive and power-efficient hardware. FreedomBox runs in a physical computer and can route your traffic. It can sit between various devices at home such […]

IFF Tool Showcase #3: CoyIM

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

Despite the fact that one of the most efficient ways of encrypting communications is OTR with Jabber/XMPP, the clients that support these protocols are either flawed from a security point of view or excessively hard to use. This is the reason why CoyIM is being developed. Based on Adam Langley’s xmpp-client, and written in the […]

IFF Tool Showcase #7: Peerio

By: Floriana On: February 29, 2016 IFF Showcase 2016 Comments Disabled

Until recently, if someone wanted to be sure that their communications could only be read by themselves and their addressees, they had to face the steep learning curve required by encryption tools like GPG or OTR. As efficient as they are in enabling an end-to-end encrypted communication, these tools are problematic for anyone who needs […]

Internet Freedom Festival: Tool showcase

By: Floriana On: February 24, 2016 Technology, Blog, IFF Showcase 2016, Inspiration Comments Disabled

The Internet Freedom Festival, which will take place in Valencia, Spain, from the 1st to the 6th March 2016, is a common space where diverse communities working against and affected by censorship and surveillance can come together to teach, plan and act. The rich schedule of the festival includes sessions on 8 different tracks and […]

Pen International gets Caisleán

By: KheOps On: January 05, 2016 DDoS Comments Disabled

PEN International is the world’s leading association of writers, working to promote literature and defend freedom of expression around the world. With a dozen permanent staff members and contact with activists all over the globe, the need for efficient collaboration tools and internal data sharing is strong. In addition, in being committed to defending civil rights, PEN International handles information […]

CryptoClasses – encryption for the masses!

By: dmitri On: January 04, 2016 TA3M Comments Disabled

In 2016 eQualit.ie is relaunching the Techno Activism 3rd Monday (TA3M) events in Montreal. To celebrate this occasion we are offering the inaugural Crypto Class – a rotating smörgåsbord of local digital security experts teaching the public about encryption. This will be a free event concentrating on practical skills and knowledge about encrypting (and decrypting) […]

Activists can run independent and secure online services with Caisleán

By: KheOps On: January 03, 2016 Digital Security, Blog Comments Disabled

Small non-profit organizations, civil rights groups and activist clusters use online tools to work collaboratively. Unfortunately, too many rely on centralized platforms that are actively exploiting private data lucratively. It is crucial for these organizations to switch to self-hosted solutions to keep control of their data and protect users. A system administrator then has to […]