Дорога в чебурнет
О цензуре Что делать? Что установить? Разорви цепи интернет-цензуры В нашей игре ты играл роль диктатора, но на самом деле ты – сила, способная противостоять цензуре. То, что ты использовал в игре, сейчас применяется против тебя. Но не беспокойся! У нас есть набор инструментов, чтобы помочь тебе обойти интернет-цензуру и сохранить свободу! Узнай больше Играй […]
Decentralized communications
dComms provides an orchestration and deployment platform for creating community orientated communications services, such as messaging and social networking. Currently, the dComms deployment offers several fediverse solutions, including the Matrix/Element chat platform and the Mastodon blogging service. Additional services include offline-first applications, the secure Delta Chat messaging platform and the decentralized Ceno browser. Self-hosted networking […]
Can a fragmented Internet governance stop Internet fragmentation?
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. […]
Canada’s refusal to bid for the Internet Governance Forum 2024: a missed opportunity for the country and global civil society
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 […]
Communications – Nadiyno digital security helpline (Ukraine)
Deadline: Thursday, October 27, 2023 Location: Ukraine, hybrid format (remote ok, with regular in-person team meetings) About Nadiyno: The Nadiyno cyber security helpline is a joint initiative of eQualitie and Internews Ukraine. A team of subject experts provide fast and comprehensive advice on digital security questions from the public. Nadiyno was launched in the fall […]
Project Manager & Team Lead – Nadiyno digital security helpline (Ukraine)
Deadline: Thursday, October 27, 2023 Location: Ukraine, hybrid format (remote ok, with regular in-person team meetings) About Nadiyno: The Nadiyno cyber security helpline is a joint initiative of eQualitie and Internews Ukraine. A team of subject experts provide fast and comprehensive advice on digital security questions from the public. Nadiyno was launched in the fall […]
Splinternet
The Splinternet can be defined as the phenomenon of the global internet fragmenting into smaller, isolated networks. This fragmentation is driven by various factors, including governmental control, censorship, technological barriers, and corporate policies. The Splinternet represents a move away from the original vision of the Internet as a unified, borderless space, towards a landscape where […]
Internet Without Borders
Internet Without Borders is a nomadic conference and hackathon series focused on combating Russian digital aggression, censorship, and propaganda. We bring together journalists, technology experts, researchers, and activists to explore strategies and improve the toolset for defending Internet freedoms. Over the span of 12 months we have visited 9 countries and hosted 11 events bringing […]
Decentralized file sharing
eQualitie’s latest innovative free software project – Ouisync – is a private and resilient solution for file sharing with your contacts or as public repositories, and syncing data between your devices. Need to share news, event documents, videos or educational material to your audiences without relying on centralized platforms that are easily blocked? […]
Ukraine Deserves to Win. Nobel Peace Prize Laureates To Send a Powerful Message to the US Government
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 […]
How decentralization saved the Ukrainian internet: lessons from 2022, government officials and telecom industry reflect in Kyiv
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 […]
Donate to Keep Ukrainians online
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.
Donate to Keep Ukrainians online
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 […]
A year in review: eQualitie’s reactions to the war in Ukraine
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 […]
Digital security helpline
Nadiyno.org is the first national public cyber security helpline of its kind – built to answer Ukrainians’ digital security questions, whatever they may be. A team of operators services the helpline taking requests sent over email, Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal. A database of solutions to many digital problems already numbers over a hundred articles to […]
Keeping Ukrainians online during electricity outages
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.
The need for a broad-based digital rights movement in Canada
By Michel Lambert Introduction On 8 February 2022, almost two years into the pandemic, two important political events happened in Canada. For the first time, a member of the federal parliament, Joel Lightbound, who is also from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party of Canada, spoke out publicly on the government’s COVID-19 policies, saying […]
Launching the Ukrainian digital security helpline – Nadiyno
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 […]
eQualitie launches CENO, world’s first decentralized p2p mobile browser
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 […]
eQualitie’s position on the war in Ukraine
We choose to stand with Ukrainians who are defending their homes and families. We mourn the lives already lost and the destruction of Ukrainian cities and its cultural heritage.
IGF 2024 in Montreal
Join eQualitie in encouraging the government of Canada to invite the IGF Secretariat to Montreal in 2024.
Открыт прием заявок на участие в WSF 2021!
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trainers meetup
11 друзей тренера Привет! Мы хотим устроить онлайн-встречу и поделиться с вами нашими находками и конкретными предложениями финансовой и технической поддержки вашей тренерской работы. Мы хотим вместе с вами обсудить то, на что обычно не хватает времени, например: Откуда берутся стратегии и методы, и как работают? Чем разные тренерские подходы отличаются друг от друга? Как […]
Deflect survey
Thank you! For a decade, eQualitie has been researching and developing advanced and ethical online security technologies. So far, we have been offering our technologies exclusively to civil society organizations like yours, who share our values and vision of an open, secure and private Internet. Protecting you and your cause is, after all, our original […]
Bot mitigation
Baskerville is an analytics engine that leverages machine learning to distinguish between normal and abnormal web traffic behavior. It is currently in production on the Deflect network, as a web application firewall, working in coordination with the Challenger and Banjax tools. Baskerville was created to help our systems team identify and block malicious bots attacking […]
Introducing Baskerville (waf!)
Baskerville is a machine operating on the Deflect network that protects sites from hounding, malicious bots. It's also an open source project that, in time, will be able to reduce bad behaviour on your networks too.
Privacy Policy
eQualitie’s Website Privacy Policy Contact forms When you complete a questionnaire or a web form on this website, we will collect and store the following personal data you may provide: your name, if provided phone number, if provided email, if provided attachments, if provided all responses to our questions, if provided Your computer’s IP address, […]
eQ offers Deflect website security services for free in response to COVID-19
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.
Web Security Fellowship – project review
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 […]
Deflect Survey
What do you think? We want to hear from you, our dear clients. What did we do well this year? What could we improve? Please take a few moments to share your experience with us. Thank you from the Deflect team! [contact-form-7 id=”29709″ title=”deflect-survey-en”] Thank you!
Deflect – Taking Care of Business
For eight eventful years, Deflect has specialized in defending high-profile human rights and independent news groups, delivering their websites to over a million daily readers and confounding the aims of state-sponsored hacking teams trying to silence them.
Deflect Labs Report #6: Phishing and Web Attacks Targeting Uzbek Human Right Activists and Independent Media
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 […]
eQualitie statement on the detention of Ola Bini
EMBASSY OF ECUADOR 99 Bank, Suite 230 Ottawa, Ontario K1P 6B9 To the Ambassador of Ecuador in Canada – Mr. Diego Stacey Moreno and to the Minister of Political and Economic Affairs, Mrs. Elizabeth Moreano, On April 11, data privacy and open source advocate Ola Bini was arrested at the Quito International Airport, where he […]
Deflect Labs Report #5 – Baskerville
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 […]
News from Deflect Labs: DDoS attacks against Caucasian Knot
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 […]
Infracon 2019 – Barcelona
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 […]
Deflect Labs Report #4 – Anatomy of a booter
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 […]
News From Deflect Labs: Botnet Targeting WordPress Websites
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 […]
fellowship
!!Civic Hackers Wanted!! for a web security fellowship eQualit.ie анонсирует первую стипендиальную программу по интернет-безопасности для IT-специалистов, которые поработают с НКО, независимыми медиа и гражданскими организациями России над самыми интересными задачами сектора. Программа будет длиться 6 месяцев. Будут образовательные курсы, консультации со специалистами по безопасности и интернет-коммуникациям, индивидуальный план развития каждого стипендиата, и ежемесячная денежная […]
News From Deflect Labs: DDoS attacks against Vietnamese Civil Society
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 […]
2018 IFF ‘Tools & Tech Showcase’ to feature user stories
The annual Internet Freedom Festival (IFF) in Valencia, Spain from 5-9 March 2018 will have hundreds of sessions and 1,700 participants from 130 countries. In addition, the 2018 IFF will feature its fourth edition of the Tools & Tech Showcase, organised by The Engine Room and eQualit.ie on the evening of Thursday, 8 March from […]
Deflect y eQPress
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. […]
Introducing (n+1)sec – a protocol for distributed multiparty chat encryption
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 […]
Distributed Deflect – project review
This is the fifth year of Deflect operations and an opportune time to draw some conclusions from the past and provide a round of feedback to our many users and peers. We fought and won several hundred battles with various distributed denial of service and social engineering attacks against us and our clients, expanding the […]
Deflect Labs reporting
Deflect Labs Report #6 – Phishing and Web Attacks Targeting Uzbek activists On the 16th of November 2018, we identified a large attack against several websites protected by Deflect. This attack used several professional security audit tools like NetSparker and WPScan to scan the websites eltuz.com and centre1.com. Deflect Labs Report #5 – Baskerville In […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #12 Zifra
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 […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #11 Z.cash
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 […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #10 Wire
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 […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #9 Toosheh
52% of the world population does not have access to any form of internet. 80% of the world doesn’t have access to an internet that is 100% uncensored. Toosheh is an innovation that can provide access to free data to a lot of people with a limited or no internet access all over the world […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #8 pretty Easy privacy (p≡p)
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 […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #7 Passbolt
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 […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #6 Paskoocheh
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. […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #5 Gridsync
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 […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #4 Coral Project Talk
Online comments are broken: managing interactions with readers can be so challenging that many newsrooms are closing comments. This may be a way of saving on resources, but also isolates journalists from their readers. The Coral Project – a project focused on the needs of community journalists founded by Mozilla, The New York Times, and […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #3 Certbot
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 […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #2 Bitmask
Bitmask is an open source desktop app that aims to be an intuitive and easy-to-use client for VPN and Encrypted Email. Bitmask is a project developed by LEAP, a non-profit dedicated to giving all internet users access to secure communication, with a focus on making encryption technology easy to use and widely available. LEAP is […]
IFF Tech&Tools Showcase 2017 – #1 Amnesty Decoders
Amnesty Decoders is an initiative by Amnesty International born out of a desire to inspire a new generation of digital activists to contribute in real time to human rights research. With this project, Amnesty started building a community of tens of thousands of volunteers who are helping the organisation turn mountains of messy data into […]
eQualit.ie at the Internet Freedom Festival
The Internet Freedom Festival (IFF), the Global Unconference of the Internet Freedom Communities, will take place in Valencia, Spain, from the 1st to the 6th March 2017. With over 1000 participants from more than 100 countries, and with 40% of women registered in the event, the IFF focuses on inclusivity and skill sharing and will […]
Distributed Denial of Women – a general strike
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 […]
Who bytes your bits? – digital security training in Toronto
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 […]
IFF 2017 – Tools & Tech Showcase
IFF – Tools & Tech Showcase The Internet Freedom Festival (IFF), the Global Unconference of the Internet Freedom Communities, is coming soon! Among the 200 sessions with over 1000 participants from a hundred countries, the IFF will also feature the second edition of the Tools & Tech Showcase, organized by eQualit.ie and the 2017 IFF […]
Deflect in 2016 – an overview
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 […]
Deflect Stats December 2016
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 […]
Deflect Labs Report #3 – 3D rendering
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 […]
Deflect Labs report #3
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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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”
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!
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
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
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 Showcase 2016
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, 14 tools will be introduced with a short presentation to the entire room and then […]
IFF Tool Showcase #2: Code of Conduct builder
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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!
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) […]
TA3M Montreal
Here’s an archive of all TA3M Montreal events in 2013 and 2014: August 18th Location: Station C (Google map) Time: 18h00 to 20h30+ Language: English and/et Français Speakers: Open* Public record databases empower citizens and cut through otherwise unnecessary bureaucracy. Dozens of federal and provincial databases scatter the Canadian net and can be a powerful […]
Activists can run independent and secure online services with Caisleán
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 […]
np1sec challenge
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 […]
Be the (Web) Master of your own (Secret) Domain
We are very pleased to announce that all websites signing up for DDoS protection with Deflect will now receive an authenticated password giving them easy access to their admin panel without having to reconfigure settings on their host server. In the past, our practice has always been to set up a special secret login address […]
Creating a Hosts File Entry
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 […]
eQualitie’s Values
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau Basic rights and fundamental freedoms are inherent, inalienable and apply equally to everyone. Human rights are universal; protected in international law and enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights. Brave people risk life and liberty to defend human rights, to mobilise, to […]
Project Motivator and Magical Manager
Job Location: Montreal-Quebec-Canada (flexible) Job Type: Full-Time Salary Range: senior level, based on experience Posting Date: 23-July-2015 Deadline for Applications: 15-August-2015 eQualit.ie is seeking an enthusiastic person to fill the shoes of a project manager at our small (but growing) organisation. This is a relatively fast-paced environment with a strong sense of individual contribution and close-knit […]
Migrating Your WordPress Site to Us
If you already have a working WordPress site that you wish to move to eQPress, the first thing you need to do is sign up with Deflect and specify that you would like to move your existing website to eQPress, providing us with the first and last name of your admin (they don’t have to […]
How to Flush Your Local DNS Resolver’s Cache
If your computer cannot reach a certain website this could be because your local DNS resolver’s cache contains an outdated record. For example, you updated your DNS records to point to eQPress but instead you are seeing your old website. This is when flushing your DNS cache will speed things up. Mac (OS X) In […]
Decentralized Web
Decentralized Internet projects present an incredible opportunity for privacy and freedom of association on a network replete with surveillance and filtering technology. Censorship.no applies peer-to-peer (p2p) routing technology for delivering Web content, and then uses decentralized caching to make it available to other users in that country. Cached web pages remain accessible even during periods […]
Deflect – 2014 in numbers
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 […]
(n+1)sec = privacy on the Net
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 […]
Group chat e2ee
(n+1)sec is a secure group messaging protocol authored by eQualit.ie with support from the Open Technology Fund. It is also a free and open source software library. The main idea behind this project is to allow secure (sec) instantaneous communications between any number (n) of people. The protocol provides for end-to-end security of synchronous communications. It is […]
Moving Your Site to HTTPS
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 […]
Recommendations for Improving Your WordPress SEO
When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), choosing the right WordPress theme framework becomes critical. Genesis does a great job of doing all the right things for search engine optimization (SEO). You will want to add some kind of analytics tracking to your site so you can gain insight about who is visiting your […]
Choosing a Canonical Website Address
Canoni-what? Canonical is the word used to describe the one address that you want the world to go to when they look you up. The typical choices are whether to use www in front of your domain or not. The classic example follows: http://www.example.com/ or http://example.com/ Choosing what your canonical website address (URL) will be […]
Standing strong in August
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 […]
Secure Hosting Guide available now
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 […]
DDoS mitigation on a network of principles and openness
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 […]
a Declaration for Distributed Online Services
a Declaration for Distributed Online Services We believe that Internet service providers have an inherent interest and duty to protect freedom of expression and privacy on their networks. Taking a principled approach to service provision is necessary to preserve these rights for activists, journalists, NGOs, non-profit organizations and grassroots groups. We welcome private sector initiatives […]
Take Back The Net!
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 […]
Training in the Ukraine
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 […]
Sweden gets eQualitie
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 […]
Feeling Insecure? Try some Digital Self-Help
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 […]
Mid-May in Tunisia
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 […]
Website protection
Deflect is a robust and innovative website protection service designed to withstand distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks — undertaken by infected ‘bots’ — are intended to disable the targeted website and prevent access for legitimate users. Deflect offers secure hosting, encrypted connections, advanced mitigation options and much more. Its a free service […]
Q1 2014 Traffic Report: DDoStoyevsky’s Crimean Punishment
In the last 12 months we have seen steady growth in many aspects of the Deflect project, particularly with respect to membership, traffic, localisation and network capacity. The most significant contributing factors have been the uptake of more partners, the efficacy of our new banning software and the continued rise in DDoS attacks as a […]
DBP: Our Philosophy
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 […]
Changing Your Database Password
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 […]
First Steps with Your eQPress Site
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 […]
The Best Options for Email Subscriptions with WordPress
The best option is to use MailChimp to manage your subscriber lists and also to send the emails. There are plugins that can integrate with your MailChimp account but even that is unnecessary if all you want is to add email addresses and then send emails when you write a new blog post. The way […]
Deflect Labs Report #3 (3D rendering)
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 […]
Creating Your New WordPress Site
Whether you are a first time WordPress user or not you may need to build your new site while your existing site continues to run. If you immediately update your DNS settings to point to eQPress without having migrated your website yet, what you’ll see is a default installation of WordPress. That’s probably not what […]
Learning WordPress
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 […]
Restricting Access to Your Website
There are times when you want to prevent the world from seeing your website. One reason might be that you are in the process of designing and developing and don’t want to share your progress with the world, since it might not be ready for all eyes. Another reason might be that you only want […]
Removing the WordPress admin User
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 […]
Protecting Your WordPress Website
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 […]
Debugging the Dreaded “White Screen of Death”
If you are here because you recently installed a plugin, then take a look at this flow chart. Both PHP errors and database errors can manifest as a white screen, a blank screen with no information, commonly known in the WordPress community as the WordPress White Screen of Death (WSOD). Here are some basic steps […]
Can I get my own IP?
Yes, if you require your own IP address you can purchase one for $10 per month.
How often is my site backed up?
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 […]
When will my WordPress core get updated?
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 […]
Antispam Recommendations
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 […]
Page – No Sidebars
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Blockquotes and Pullquotes
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Video Shortcodes
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Typography and Dropcaps
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Tab Shortcodes
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Left Aligned Image Seamlessly myocardinate enabled supply chains through future-proof models. Quickly evisculate market positioning infrastructures through real-time experiences. Completely transform accurate value after leading-edge services. Progressively cultivate stand-alone web-readiness and progressive expertise. [image wrapper_class=”custom-img” title=”Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” align=”left” size=”medium” src=”/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/5364463036_d7eb62f458_b.jpg”] Dramatically parallel task functional e-markets vis-a-vis orthogonal channels. Dynamically fabricate standardized content […]
Page – Left Sidebar
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Page – Default Template
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