Pictures of people taking to the streets in China have been in the news for over a week. The nationwide wave of demonstrations against the restrictive zero-Covid policy is believed to be the largest since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
However, it is not limited to the streets – the internet is also a major battleground. Digital protesters are using software like top VPN services to break through China’s great firewall and spread information across national borders.
While Chinese authorities may be best equipped in this area, Internet censorship is on the rise around the world. In Iran, for example, the government recently restricted Instagram and WhatsApp in an attempt to silence protesters. The same thing happened in Turkey after the explosion in Istanbul.
According to the latest Liberty House report, in 2022, two thirds of the countries analyzed “cut off their inhabitants from the flow of messages and information across borders”. At the same time, “governments are increasingly blocking, criminalizing or imposing regulatory requirements on circumvention tools.” AND vpn attack exactly what is happening in China right now.
With authorities targeting VPN apps more and more, the tech company has developed a tool focused solely on helping people bypass censorship. As one of its developers TechRadar said, lantern (opens in a new tab) goes out of his way to access censored content.
What is a Lantern?
“Lantern still works great in China,” said Lucas, one of Lantern’s developers. “It’s solely focused on how to get traffic to and from countries with high censorship.”
People living outside extreme censorship environments may have never heard of such software. But Lantern has been helping people beat censorship for a long time, since around 2013.
Users looking to avoid the Great Firewall were the first to download Lantern when their VPN for China wasn’t enough. “We have largely earned our passions in China and learned a lot there.”
Then, the 2016 wave of pro-narchist protests made him popular among Iranians. A similar surge in demand came only in September this year, when the death of 22-year-old girlfriend Mahsa Amini sparked a wave of ongoing unrest.
“I think it was clear relatively early, especially in China, that there was going to be a battle between tools and censors. So we thought we had a useful role to play. Some useful ideas and technical knowledge for more sophisticated use”.
From protocol variations to hide the traffic the government wants to censor, to several server configurations capable of evading government blockades, Lantern employs a wide range of different techniques depending on which censorship machine needs to be defeated.
“We made small optimizations in some countries because we realized we could exploit certain vulnerabilities,” Lucas told TechRadar. “There are definitely common things we do in different countries. But it can happen that one protocol that works in one country doesn’t work in another, or it’s just that the context is a little different.”
For example, political events seem to be an important factor to consider as most countries adopt a more stringent grip in politically sensitive moments.
Available for all major operating systems (Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS and Ubuntu), users can choose between a free and a paid plan. The latter gives you unlimited access to a daily data allowance of 256 MB. It also gives users access to special data centers.
The vast majority of people who download the tool are users of Lantern’s free version. However, after recent events in China, the company has seen a 400% increase in Lantern Pro purchases.
Lantern vs. VPN
The lantern is certainly not the only tool to circumvent. Secure VPN services are widely used to bypass online censorship, for example. However, according to its CEO, Lantern is better equipped for such a task.
As a way to increase online privacy, a VPN spoofs the real location of users. This means that they can theoretically access otherwise censored content no matter where they are.
Unfortunately, as VPN use increases among people living with limited internet freedom, governments are working harder and harder to make their jobs harder.
This is mainly possible because providers use specific VPN protocols to encrypt traffic that techniques such as deep packet inspection can identify and block. They also usually only have a few IP addresses in each country that you can easily recognize.
Despite VPNs now employing tactics such as obfuscation technology to avoid such blocks, Lucas believes the difference between the two is still significant.
“With Lantern, there’s a huge gap in a lot of different techniques to make it more sophisticated in terms of bypassing what the censors are doing and what the censors are capable of,” he said.
What’s next?
Thanks to nearly 10 years of experience, the number of Lantern users has increased approximately fourfold in the last year. “Unfortunately, as the world gets worse, our number of users is growing,” said Lucas.
As the issue of censorship is expected to become even more relevant in the near future, the company is working on new features to open up the internet to everyone around the world.
Discover provides a censorship-resistant and privacy-protected archive of public content while offering an easy way to find and share censored or potentially censored content. Using peer-to-peer technology, all Lantern users can upload videos and content anonymously and securely for the world to see.
“The thing is, it’s a free space to distribute content internally within the country,” Lucas explained.
Only available on Android and desktop at the time of writing, the feature has already been used among Iranians over the past months.
The use of lanterns in Iran is growing rapidly… Currently, at least 8% of the total internet bandwidth in Iran goes through our app! Please keep sharing our download for free and open internet: #MahsaAmini #filternetSeptember 30, 2022
Still to be released, his chat is a secure and private messaging service. It is very similar to Signal, but with safer defaults and built-in censorship bypass. No phone number, personal registration or SIM card required for added anonymity.
Also in preparation is web proxy design is due out by the end of the year. This will act as a widget that can be integrated into any website allowing visitors to click on it and use it as a proxy to access the open internet.
Whether it’s effective protocols running underneath or people in uncensored regions contributing their IP address and bandwidth, Lantern aims to be a tool to make the internet freer on a fundamental level in a truly collaborative way.
“By implementing this kind of overlay network on the Internet, we hope to make censorship very difficult to achieve.”
