Freegate is a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

application developed by Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT) that enables internet users from

mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

, Syria,

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia ( The Middle East). It is located at t ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, Australia, and the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

among others, to view websites blocked by their governments. The program takes advantage of a range of

proxy servers In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client (computing), client requesting a Web resource, resource and the server providing that resource. Instead of connecting directly to a ...

called Dynaweb. This allows users to bypass Internet

firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spr ...

s that block web sites by using DIT's

Peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

(P2P)-like proxy network system. FreeGate's anti-censorship capability is further enhanced by a new, unique

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can de ...

and compression algorithm in the versions of 6.33 and above. Dynamic Internet Technology estimates Freegate had 200,000 users in 2004. The maintainer and CEO of DIT is Bill Xia.

Dynaweb

DynaWeb is a collection of anti-

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

services provided by Dynamic Internet Technology Inc. (DIT). DynaWeb is a web-based anti-censorship portal. Once users point their

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

at one of the DynaWeb URLs, a web page will be presented similar to the original, with most blocked websites as links. In addition, a user can type in any URL in the box on this page and DynaWeb will fetch the pages for him or her instantly. No software is needed, nor are any settings tweaked on a user's computer. Since the Chinese net police watch DynaWeb's portal websites closely and block them as soon as they identify them, DynaWeb must be dynamic. It has hundreds of mirror sites at any time, and each with a varying IP and DNS domain names to defeat IP blocking and

DNS hijacking DNS hijacking, DNS poisoning, or DNS redirection is the practice of subverting the resolution of Domain Name System (DNS) queries. This can be achieved by malware that overrides a computer's TCP/IP configuration to point at a rogue DNS server unde ...

. On the backend, DynaWeb also has mechanisms to proactively monitor the blocking status of each of its mirror sites, and as soon as blocking is detected, it will change the IP and DNS domain name instantly. To keep users connected to such a dynamic infrastructure, DynaWeb has a variety of channels to keep users updated. For example, a user can send a message to one of DynaWeb's instant messenger (IM) accounts, and will get an instant reply showing the newest addresses of DynaWeb portals. Similar things are being done with emails. By these many, dynamic channels, DynaWeb outsmarts any attempt to collect all DynaWeb addresses by the censors, because each user receives only a (different) subset of DynaWeb's addresses. Automatic blocking detection combined with quick reaction apparently frustrates the blocking efforts on the China side of the

Great Firewall of China The Great Firewall (''GFW''; ) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected for ...

(GFW). DIT also releases a tiny piece of software, FreeGate, which directly taps into DynaWeb's backbone and keeps a user connected to the dynamic channels automatically. There are indications that FreeGate has some capabilities built-in to exploit some zero-day vulnerabilities of the GFW. Today DynaWeb offers the widest range of options for users to access Internet freely, and supports more than 50 million web hits per day on average from Chinese users alone.

Creation and funding

DIT was founded in 2001 to provide email delivery services to China for US government agencies and

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

s. In 2002, DIT started to provide anti-censorship services under the framework of DynaWeb, and like UltraSurf, DynaWeb became a top contender of the GFW-penetration effort. Freegate was created by

Falun Gong Falun Gong (, ) or Falun Dafa (; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a new religious movement.Junker, Andrew. 2019. ''Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora'', pp. 23–24, 33, 119 ...

practitioners and has been financed by the

Broadcasting Board of Governors The United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), formerly the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), is an independent agency of the United States government that broadcasts news and information. It describes its mission, "vital to US nation ...

, a US governmental agency.Geoffrey A. Fowler: “Chinese Censors of Internet Face ‘Hacktivists’ in US”. In: ''Wall Street Journal'', 14 February 2006. Freegate also receives funding from Human Rights in China, which is also one of its clients and which receives some funding from the American

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

the

National Endowment for Democracy The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is an organization in the United States that was founded in 1983 for promoting democracy in other countries by promoting political and economic institutions such as political groups, trade unions, ...

. According to a CRS report, the US government gave funding of $685,000 to Freegate in 2005.

Feature

Freegate Android VPN

Malware reports

In 2004, the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

'', citing a member of staff at Symantec in mainland China, reported that

Norton AntiVirus Norton AntiVirus is an anti-virus or anti-malware software product founded by Peter Norton, developed and distributed by Gen Digital since 1990 as part of its Norton family of computer security products. It uses signatures and heuristics to i ...

identified Freegate as a

Trojan horse The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending before the war is concluded, ...

. There were initial fears that the reports may be a ploy by the

Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...

(CCP) authorities to encourage removal of the software from computers, but it was soon delisted as a threat. Symantec explained that its detection was based on the software operating similarly to various Trojan horses, based on the use of proxies to penetrate firewalls used to block web sites, but that it had modified its detection to exclude Freegate. In 2013, it was reported that "pro-government electronic actors" in Syria sent electronic messages to rebels encouraging them to download a file named Freegate which was claimed to be designed to help dissidents circumvent state surveillance agencies, but actually it was a malware and the intruder was able to monitor what the victims were typing on their computers and read or remove the files. In August 2013 while Freegate was testing a new proxy program, some people thought it was a

phishing Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwa ...

attack. Reports from

said the users who used Freegate to pass

Internet censorship in Iran Iran is notable for its degree of government-sponsored internet censorship. , the country blocks approximately 27% of internet sites and , blocks half of the top 500 visited websites worldwide. The Iranian government and Islamic Revolutionary G ...

, were led to a fake page instead of

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

's main website. Freegate published a note saying they were testing a new proxy program, and the fake Facebook page was a tunnel. Although IT experts warned users to be careful with the tunnel link because it doesn't use SSL security so users' information is not encrypted.

References

External links

Freegate's main pageDynamic Internet Technology, Inc. (DIT) - Main site Home pageLatest version of Freegate on "DIT Chinese website"Latest version of Freegate on ''Softpedia.com''Latest version of Freegate Professional on ''Lo4d.com''FreeGate, @ Global Internet Freedom Consortium siteGoogle China censors newsTor: anonymity onlinePresentation of Freegate
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''How to Bypass Internet Censorship''
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FLOSS Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...