SplinterCon conference report on internet fragmentation

SplinterCon conference report on internet fragmentation

By: dmitri On: May 01, 2024 , Comments Disabled
The inaugural SplinterCon was held in Montreal, December 2023. This was a first-of-its-kind gathering that brought together a diverse community of network researchers, technology entrepreneurs, software developers, and internet freedom advocates to address the challenges and innovations in the realm of the “Splinternet.” The proceedings and outcomes of this event are documented in the post […]
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Can a fragmented Internet governance stop Internet fragmentation?

By: Michel On: October 16, 2023 Comments Disabled
by Michel Lambert The Internet is a vital resource for communication, collaboration and creation with anyone, anywhere.  It is no longer possible to imagine our world without the Internet, the central nerve of the global economy.  We don’t yet realize its full potential in terms of knowledge, development and the common well-being of all humankind. […]
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Canada’s refusal to bid for the Internet Governance Forum 2024: a missed opportunity for the country and global civil society

By: dmitri On: October 11, 2023 , Comments Disabled
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) plays a vital role in shaping the future of the internet, fostering international cooperation, and addressing the various challenges that arise in the digital age. In recent months, many Canadians organizations were having high hopes of hosting the IGF in Montreal in 2024. Led by eQualitie, envisioning it as a […]
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Ukraine Deserves to Win. Nobel Peace Prize Laureates To Send a Powerful Message to the US Government

By: dmitri On: July 22, 2023 , , Comments Disabled
From July 25 to 28, 2023, a delegation of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureates from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia will hold meetings with senior US government officials, delivering a message of unwavering support for Ukraine. The visit, initiated and supported by eQualitie will take place in Washington DC in partnership with the National Endowment […]
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How decentralization saved the Ukrainian internet: lessons from 2022, government officials and telecom industry reflect in Kyiv

By: dmitri On: June 06, 2023 , , Comments Disabled
How decentralization saved the Ukrainian internet: lessons from 2022, government officials and telecom industry reflect in Kyiv

How decentralization saved the Ukrainian internet: lessons from 2022, government officials and telecom industry reflect in Kyiv

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The Ukrainian telecoms market incurred $2.3B in losses during the initial year of the invasion, per the World Bank. Key stakeholders, including industry leaders, government officials, and international partners, gathered in Kyiv for the “Ukraine: Communications and Internet Resilience during War” conference on May 26, 2023. Organized by eQualitie and Internews Ukraine, the event focused […]
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Donate to Keep Ukrainians online

By: dmitri On: January 26, 2023 , Comments Disabled
Donate to Keep Ukrainians online

Donate to Keep Ukrainians online

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Since October 2022, Russia has been targeting critical civilian infrastructure in Ukraine with its missiles and drones. Attacks have degraded electricity generation and distribution, cutting off power and thereby heating, water treatment and Internet connectivity for millions of people. Rolling electricity blackouts lasting anywhere from several hours to days are making this brutal conflict even harsher. Even if the war was to stop tomorrow, damage to electricity power plants and distribution networks will persist.
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A year in review: eQualitie’s reactions to the war in Ukraine

By: dmitri On: January 02, 2023 , Comments Disabled
A year in review: eQualitie’s reactions to the war in Ukraine

A year in review: eQualitie’s reactions to the war in Ukraine

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Since the beginning of the second invasion in February 2022, eQualitie has launched a series of rapid efforts focusing on digital security capacity building and urgent response to various communication and safety needs of Ukrainian citizens, media agencies, human rights organizations, and CSOs. A lot of the focus of our existing programming on web security […]
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Keeping Ukrainians online during electricity outages

By: dmitri On: December 26, 2022 , , Comments Disabled
Keeping Ukrainians online during electricity outages

Keeping Ukrainians online during electricity outages

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A cargo weighing 6,600 kg as humanitarian aid arrived in Ukraine from Poland, where eQualitie purchased a series of  batteries donated for Ukrainian ISPs. Each battery weighing 38 kg will be installed on the fibre optic and distribution networks of local Internet providers, allowing them to power their networks for an additional 10-12 hours through the electricity outages. This batch of donations has a total capacity of 20,640 Amps or 247 kWh. - helping more Ukrainians access the Internet without interruption. 
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Launching the Ukrainian digital security helpline – Nadiyno

By: dmitri On: November 03, 2022 , , Comments Disabled
On 8th of November 2022, eQualitie and Internews Ukraine are launching nadiyno.org – the first national digital security helpline in Ukraine, for responding to any and all questions from the public relating to cyber security. We have assembled and trained a dedicated team of helpline support staff and digital experts, stood up systems to document […]
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eQualitie launches CENO, world’s first decentralized p2p mobile browser

By: dmitri On: May 10, 2022 , , , , , Comments Disabled
eQualitie launches CENO, world’s first decentralized p2p mobile browser

eQualitie launches CENO, world’s first decentralized p2p mobile browser

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CENO Browser lets anyone access and share information in areas with censored communications Montreal, May 10, 2022 – eQualitie, developer of open-source and reusable digital security systems, is pleased to announce the public launch of its newest democratization tool, CENO Browser. Short for censorship.no, CENO is the world’s first mobile browser that is built specifically […]
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eQ offers Deflect website security services for free in response to COVID-19

By: dmitri On: April 27, 2020 , , Comments Disabled
eQ offers Deflect website security services for free in response to COVID-19

eQ offers Deflect website security services for free in response to COVID-19

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In response and solidarity with numerous efforts that have sprung up to help with communications, coordination and outreach during the COVID-19 epidemic, eQualitie is offering Deflect website security and content delivery services for free until the end of 2020 to organizations and individuals working to help others during this difficult time.
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Web Security Fellowship – project review

By: dmitri On: January 08, 2020 Comments Disabled
Launched in early 2019, the Web Security Fellowship was a pilot project for eQualitie to introduce more IT professionals to the ranks of active civil society organizations. Eight fellows were selected from a public application process for a six-month placement within host organizations, comprising of human rights and independent media groups in Russia. The fellowship […]
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Deflect Labs Report #6: Phishing and Web Attacks Targeting Uzbek Human Right Activists and Independent Media

By: Etienne On: May 09, 2019 , , , , , Comments Disabled
Key Findings We’ve discovered infrastructure used to launch and coordinate attacks targeting independent media and human rights activists from Uzbekistan The campaign has been active since early 2016, using web and phishing attacks to suppress and exploit their targets We have no evidence of who is behind this campaign but the target list points to […]
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Deflect Labs Report #5 – Baskerville

By: anna On: March 24, 2019 , , Comments Disabled
Using Machine Learning to Identify Cyber Attacks The Deflect platform is a free website security service defending civil society and human rights groups from digital attack. Currently, malicious traffic is identified on the Deflect network by Banjax, a system that uses handwritten rules to flag IPs that are behaving like attacking bots, so that they […]
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News from Deflect Labs: DDoS attacks against Caucasian Knot

By: dmitri On: March 19, 2019 , , Comments Disabled
Key Findings In November and December 2018, we identified 3 DDoS attacks against independent media website Кавказский Узел (Caucasian Knot) The first attack was by far the largest DDoS attack seen by the Deflect project in 2018, clocking over 7.7 million queries in 4 hours The three attacks used different types of relays, including open […]
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Infracon 2019 – Barcelona

By: dmitri On: March 15, 2019 Comments Disabled
Open Day The Infracon Open Day invites technology groups, NGOs, organized civil society and media in Barcelona to discuss technology solutions for self-determination and autonomy on the Internet. Register your participation below! Infracon – is a global conference for independent Internet service providers working on solutions for autonomous infrastructure. eQualitie and Pangea are bringing together […]
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Deflect Labs Report #4 – Anatomy of a booter

By: Etienne On: January 09, 2019 , , , Comments Disabled
Key Findings We identified a DDoS attack against the Israeli human rights website www.btselem.org on the 2nd of November Attackers used three different type of relays to overload the website and were automatically mitigated by Deflect We identified the booter infrastructure (professional DDoS service) and accessed and analyzed its tools, which we describe in this article In […]
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News From Deflect Labs: Botnet Targeting WordPress Websites

By: Etienne On: October 15, 2018 , , , Comments Disabled
Key Findings We identified traffic from thousands of IPs trying to brute-force WordPress websites protected by Deflect using the same user-agent (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0) since September 2017 We confirmed that it was not only targeting Deflect protected websites, but targeting also a large number of websites over Internet We analyze in […]
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News From Deflect Labs: DDoS attacks against Vietnamese Civil Society

By: Etienne On: September 07, 2018 , , , Comments Disabled
Key Findings We identified 10 different DDoS attacks targeting two Vietnamese websites protected by Deflect, viettan.org and baotiengdan.com, between the 17th of April and 15th of June 2018. These attacks happened in the context of an important lack of Internet Freedom in Vietnam with regular online attacks against activists and independent media. We sorted these […]
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Deflect y eQPress

By: dmitri On: August 29, 2017 , Comments Disabled
Sobre Deflect El proyecto Deflect es un servicio que disminuye las afectaciones de un “Distributed Denial of Service” o Ataques distribuidos de denegación de servicio (DDoS). DDoS se refiere al intento de hacer un aparato o red (network) no disponible para el usuario. Deflect neutraliza los cyberattacks contra medios independientes y defensores de derechos humanos. […]
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Introducing (n+1)sec – a protocol for distributed multiparty chat encryption

By: dmitri On: August 10, 2017 Comments Disabled
Today we present (n+1)sec, a free (libre), end-to-end secure, synchronous protocol for group chat developed by eQualit.ie with support from the Open Technology Fund. After 2 years of design, development and testing, we are releasing the (n+1)sec protocol and library for securing group conversations on various messaging systems, like Jabber/XMPP or IRC. Following a  protocol and […]
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IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #12 Zifra

By: Floriana On: March 07, 2017 Comments Disabled
Zifra is a building a memory card with state-of-the-art encryption capabilities. Not only does it encrypt, but it also hides the files so that they become invisible to prying eyes. Two guiding principles in Zifra’s development are openness and user-friendliness. Verified open source code is used for crucial parts of the solution and Zifra’s technology […]
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IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #11 Z.cash

By: Floriana On: March 07, 2017 Comments Disabled
Freedom of expression comes in many forms. One of them is the ability to send value to another person or business regardless of location or intent. Current financial privacy models are based on centralized systems which historically limit inclusion to the global market and are susceptible to compromise and potentially unlawful subpoenas, as highlighted in […]
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IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #10 Wire

By: Floriana On: March 07, 2017 Comments Disabled
Wire is a secure, end-to-end encrypted messenger. It’s open source, works on phones, tablets and computers, supports up to 7 devices per account, and doesn’t require a phone number to register. Wire is headquartered in Switzerland with servers in the EU.Wire started with an idea that people need and deserve a privacy-focused messenger that wasn’t […]
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IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #8 pretty Easy privacy (p≡p)

By: Floriana On: March 07, 2017 Comments Disabled
p≡p stands for pretty Easy privacy. The idea is to make end-to-end cryptography accessible to everyone by automatizing all steps usually taught to users at CryptoPartys, starting from OpenPGP encryption for email and then including chat communication channels like XMPP+OTR. p≡p end user software comes along with a cloudless (peer-to-peer) synchronization protocol allowing users to […]
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IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #7 Passbolt

By: Floriana On: March 07, 2017 Comments Disabled
Passbolt is an open source password manager built for collaboration. It allows teams to securely share and store credentials – like the wifi password of their office, their organisation’s Twitter handle or the administrator password of their router. It’s 2017 and the most popular passwords are still “123456” and “azerty”. Most people still reuse passwords […]
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IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #6 Paskoocheh

By: Floriana On: March 07, 2017 Comments Disabled
Due to heavy information controls, Iranians face significant challenges when attempting to access the Internet. In addition, popular Iranian app markets such as Cafe Bazaar are not allowed to distribute any circumvention tools, and many tool developers over-comply with sanctions by not making their tools available to Iranians. Paskoocheh is a response to these problems. […]
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IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #5 Gridsync

By: Floriana On: March 07, 2017 Comments Disabled
Gridsync is an open source, cross-platform desktop application and graphical user interface for Tahoe-LAFS, the Least Authority File Store.   Tahoe-LAFS’s unique design offers a number of highly-desirable features for users that require secure and reliable cloud storage: its “provider-independent” security model ensures that storage service providers cannot read or alter the data of their […]
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IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #3 Certbot

By: Floriana On: March 07, 2017 Comments Disabled
In a nutshell, Certbot is a tool for getting certificates from the Let’s Encrypt certificate authority (CA) and configuring your web server to encrypt users’ connections to your website with Let’s Encrypt certificates. But there’s more to it: Certbot is an easy-to-use automatic client that fetches and deploys SSL/TLS certificates for your webserver. Developed by […]
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Distributed Denial of Women – a general strike

By: Floriana On: February 13, 2017 , , Comments Disabled
It’s a well-known problem: the tech industry, be it proprietary or open source, hasn’t managed to tackle inequality in its ranks despite several proactive efforts and millions of dollars invested to diversify their staff. There are many explanations and critiques of these approaches, but in the end what counts is that technology is still developed […]
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Who bytes your bits? – digital security training in Toronto

By: Floriana On: February 08, 2017 Comments Disabled
On the 9th February eQualit.ie’s director Dmitri Vitaliev will lead a digital security training for high-risk journalism hosted by journalist Susana Ferreira as part of #OffAssignment Toronto, a series of workshops and talks for freelance journalists and independent media-makers in Toronto, and organized with the support of CJFE at the DAIS Tkaronto Gallery in Toronto […]
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Deflect in 2016 – an overview

By: Floriana On: January 18, 2017 Comments Disabled
In 2016, Deflect set some records and helped defend online voices against some record breaking attacks. Throughout the year, Deflect served a bit less than 2% of the population connected to the Internet in 2016, published 3 DDoS analytic reports, mitigated the strongest DDoS attack that ever targeted our network, renewed its funding and began […]
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Deflect Stats December 2016

By: Floriana On: January 10, 2017 , Comments Disabled
In December 2016 the Deflect network recorded a slight increase in the number of total hits as compared to the previous month, with a comparable number of unique visitors and banning events. Overall, our edges served 635.4 million pages to 9.6 million unique visitors and banned 36,681 bots.   The following pie charts offer some […]
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Deflect Labs report #3

By: dmitri On: December 14, 2016 , 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 […]
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Deflect Stats November 2016

By: Floriana On: December 13, 2016 , , 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 […]
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TA3M, December 19th – the Cryptmas edition

By: dmitri On: December 07, 2016 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: – […]
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Deflect Stats October 2016

By: Floriana On: November 14, 2016 , 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 […]
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Deflect Stats September 2016

By: Floriana On: October 13, 2016 , 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 […]
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Deflect Stats August 2016

By: Floriana On: September 12, 2016 , 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 […]
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Deflecting cyber attacks against the Black Lives Matter website

By: Floriana On: July 12, 2016 , , 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 […]
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Deflect Stats June 2016

By: Floriana On: July 01, 2016 , 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 […]
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Deflect Stats May 2016

By: Floriana On: June 07, 2016 , 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 […]
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Deflect Labs Report #2

By: dmitri On: June 02, 2016 , , 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 […]
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Deflect Stats April 2016

By: dmitri On: May 05, 2016 , , 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 […]
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eQPress – secure hosting with Deflect

By: Floriana On: April 29, 2016 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 […]
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TA3M APRIL ’16 – a Basic Internet Service in Canada?

By: dmitri On: April 13, 2016 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 […]
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Deflect Labs Report #1

By: Floriana On: March 29, 2016 , , , 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 […]
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TA3M MARCH ’16 “WHO BYTES YOUR BITS”

By: dmitri On: March 14, 2016 , 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase: the winners!

By: Floriana On: March 04, 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, […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #14: CGIProxy

By: Floriana On: March 03, 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. […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #15: SecurePost

By: Floriana On: March 03, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #11: StoryMaker

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #13: uProxy

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #6: OnionShare

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #1: CENO

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #5: NetAidKit

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #12: Umbrella

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #10: StingWatch

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #9: Qubes OS

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #8: Psiphon

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #4: FreedomBox

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #3: CoyIM

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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IFF Tool Showcase #7: Peerio

By: Floriana On: February 29, 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 […]
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Pen International gets Caisleán

By: KheOps On: January 05, 2016 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 […]
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CryptoClasses – encryption for the masses!

By: dmitri On: January 04, 2016 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) […]
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Activists can run independent and secure online services with Caisleán

By: KheOps On: January 03, 2016 , 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 […]
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np1sec challenge

By: dmitri On: November 25, 2015 Comments Disabled
The challenge involve partially implementing some of our XMPP test client event handlers for namely join, receive and send. The result will be a client that people can use to join and chat securely. Note that the purpose of the challenge is for the EQ team to get to know the candidates and be comfortable […]
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Creating a Hosts File Entry

By: dmitri On: September 30, 2015 , , , Comments Disabled
If you wish to access your domain before your DNS has been updated, you can update your local ‘hosts file’, which will allow your computer to view your new site. Follow the appropriate instructions below. Please note that this will work only with HTTPS and not with HTTP. If you need any help with this procedure […]
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Deflect – 2014 in numbers

By: dmitri On: January 29, 2015 Comments Disabled
The Deflect projects protects human rights and independent media websites from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. It is a free service for qualifying organisations and the source code is publicly available on the project wiki. In our third year of operations we protected websites from over 60 countries and present herein some interesting facts […]
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(n+1)sec = privacy on the Net

By: dmitri On: December 09, 2014 Comments Disabled
In advance of this year’s Human Rights Day, eQualit.ie is proud to release the first public draft of a provably secure protocol for group messaging on the Internet. The protocol provides for end­-to­-end security of synchronous communications between any number of people. It is efficient and builds on recent advancements in cryptographic research. Security properties of (n+1)sec include: Confidentiality: the […]
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Moving Your Site to HTTPS

By: dmitri On: November 26, 2014 , , , Comments Disabled
HTTPS (adding an S for “secure” to HTTP) is an internet communication protocol that protects your users’ connections to your website. Data sent using HTTPS is secured in that HTTPS provides 3 layers of protection: Encryption: while the user is browsing a website, nobody can see their conversations, track their activities in the website, or […]
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Standing strong in August

By: dmitri On: September 16, 2014 Comments Disabled
Ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East saw a stream of independent media and human rights organizations turn to Deflect for DDoS protection. The network delivered over 75 million pages to legitimate readers in August, our highest numbers to date. One week in particular stood out as we brought on-board two websites in the midst of ongoing DDoS […]
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Secure Hosting Guide available now

By: dmitri On: June 23, 2014 Comments Disabled
We are pleased to announce the launch of our Secure Hosting Guide, available now on learn.equalit.ie. The guide has been produced in collaboration with our friends at Huridocs and will be useful for anyone who wants to know the key factors involved when looking for a good hosting provider. It has been written for users […]
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DDoS mitigation on a network of principles and openness

By: dmitri On: June 12, 2014 , , Comments Disabled
Yesterday saw the public launch of Project Galileo, a CloudFlare initiative that partners with reputable international advocacy and civil society organizations to offer free DDoS mitigation services to human rights and independent media groups. As with our support for Google’s Project Shield last year, we welcome all attempts to bring DDoS mitigation to a wider […]
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Take Back The Net!

By: dmitri On: June 02, 2014 , Comments Disabled
This week eQualitie will be attending Take Back The Net, a two-day conference in which “human rights advocates and transformative technology providers will meet to discuss what civil society organisations and individuals can do to restore trust in communication infrastructure”. We are attending as guests of the Association of Progressive Communications, organisers of the conference […]
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Training in the Ukraine

By: dmitri On: June 02, 2014 , Comments Disabled
eQualit.ie undertook two missions during the last month to work with independent media workers and aspiring digital security trainers from across the Ukraine. Over one hundred news media workers were trained in secure communications and a very capable group of future trainers were taken through the advanced training so that this valuable knowledge can continue […]
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Sweden gets eQualitie

By: dmitri On: June 02, 2014 Comments Disabled
Last week eQualitie attended the Stockholm Internet Forum 2014, an annual gathering of multi-stakeholders from internet governance, global civil society, freedom of expression networks, independent media and even some progressive-minded government types. We spent three days meeting with activists, journalists and policy makers to listen to their concerns and discuss the best ways forward for […]
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Feeling Insecure? Try some Digital Self-Help

By: dmitri On: May 29, 2014 Comments Disabled
We’re launching a free guide for teaching yourself Digital Security which can be accessed right here. Over the last 8 years, eQualitie has been leading Digital Security trainings in dozens of countries for hundreds of activists and journalists, as well building two Digital Security schools and training many others to become trainers themselves. Every year […]
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Mid-May in Tunisia

By: dmitri On: May 24, 2014 Comments Disabled
We are in Tunis this week leading a series of “training of trainers” sessions at DSS 216 , the Digital Security School set up by eQualitie in conjunction with our friends at Alternatives, the long-established Montreal NGO. The school is staffed by co-ordinators from across the Middle East and North Africa and operates in Arabic […]
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DBP: Our Philosophy

By: dmitri On: May 02, 2014 Comments Disabled
The Deflect team has spent the last two years mitigating DDoS attacks against independent media and human rights websites. We’ve learnt a thing or two along the way and have put a lot of effort into developing open source software to make our lives (and weekends) a bit easier. The BotnetDBP project consists of four […]
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Changing Your Database Password

By: dmitri On: April 09, 2014 , , Comments Disabled
We are serious about our passwords here at Deflect. You might have noticed our 23 random character passwords for your WordPress admin user we generated during the installation of your site. That’s the kind of password that will keep your site safe from brute force and dictionary attacks. The random.org site provides some tools for […]
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First Steps with Your eQPress Site

By: dmitri On: March 14, 2014 , , Comments Disabled
Your shiny new eQPress site is ready to go! Now what? Here are some recommendations. Enable “pretty” permalinks under “Settings” -> “Permalinks”. Typically “Post name” is a good option, but you can choose whichever setting you prefer other than “Plain”. The reason for doing this is two-fold: on the one hand, your URLs just look […]
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Deflect Labs Report #3 (3D rendering)

By: dmitri On: December 14, 2013 , Comments Disabled
Botnet attack analysis of Deflect protected website blacklivesmatter.com Seamus Tuohy and eQualit.ie 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 of technical methods used in attempts to […]
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Learning WordPress

By: dmitri On: November 09, 2013 , , Comments Disabled
Here are some great resources for learning how to use WordPress. The Official WordPress User Manual – https://make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual/ This is a living document created and maintained by the amazing and dedicated WordPress.org team. Easy WP Guide – https://easywpguide.com/ You won’t find any talk of HTML, PHP or creating WP Themes here. What you will find […]
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Removing the WordPress admin User

By: dmitri On: April 17, 2013 , , Comments Disabled
Brute-force login attempts are typically carried out against the “admin” user. “Admin” used to be the default username of the first administrator created when installing WordPress, but now the installation asks you what you want to name it, and on eQPress it will be your administrator’s name and surname (not necessarily the “official” ones!). If […]
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Protecting Your WordPress Website

By: dmitri On: April 12, 2013 , , Comments Disabled
Hosted behind the Deflect network, eQPress is designed to prevent your site from getting attacked or hacked. Security is best practiced as a series of countermeasures against known vulnerabilities or threats. We provide the essential underlying protective layers and the rest is up to you. There is no protection against a weak password, so… The […]
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How often is my site backed up?

By: dmitri On: April 10, 2013 , , Comments Disabled
Backup are important so we take a multi-layered approach. The first is an enterprise level solution which encrypts all data and transfers the archives to Amazons S3. We retain 30 daily backups, and 15 weekly backups which will allow you to restore from archives that are up to 3 months old. The next layer of […]
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When will my WordPress core get updated?

By: dmitri On: April 10, 2013 , , Comments Disabled
WordPress periodically releases maintenance updates. These are typically for significant bug fixes or security issues. Since these upgrades might have security implications, and because WordPress’s popularity makes it susceptible to an exploit being quickly released, we attempt to apply these upgrades as quickly as possible. Here’s what the different versions look like: Major release: 4.1 […]
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Antispam Recommendations

By: dmitri On: April 05, 2013 , , Comments Disabled
Spam is a bummer, as we’re sure most of you agree. Here are some antispam tools we’ve personally used. This first one is great. Anti-spam Pros super simple, no configuration integrates seamlessly with any theme free So far no cons. Crazy, right? Another strategy is to use 2 plugins together. For example, we’ve had excellent […]
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