[Infowarrior] - CCC's USB Dongle Breaches Great Firewall of China

[Richard Forno]

USB Dongle Breaches Great Firewall of China
By Charlie Sorrel
August 08, 2008 | 6:36:13 AMCategories: Security

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/08/usb-dongle-brea.html

There's no doubt that the Chinese Olympics are high-tech. From the  
underwater, HD torpedo cam to the China Police Segway Division, the  
amount of gadgetry involved makes the Tour de France look like a kids'  
bike race. But what of that notorious anti-freedom surveillance  
system, the so-called Great Firewall of China? Journalists inside the  
country will have their access to certain websites blocked and,  
depending on your level of paranioa, they might even have their  
internet usage tracked.

The Freedom Stick gets around this problem. This €20 ($30) USB dongle  
is pre-loaded with software which will secure the communications of  
any computer it is slotted into. Made available by Germany's Chaos  
Computer Club, the stick uses the TOR (The Onion Router) network to  
cloak your connections, routing traffic around the world through  
anonymous computers, thus avoiding detection.

The stick will only be available throughout the duration of the games,  
so this is probably more of a propaganda exercise than anything else.  
You don't necessarily need to use a hardware solution -- TOR can be  
accessed with software only -- but sticking a thumbdrive into a public  
PC is a lot less suspicious than reconfiguring network settings and  
installing browser extensions.