Ghostnet Wiki

## Decentralized traffic discovery resistant network

GhostNet is a private network that was designed to deliver content to end user location with resistance to traffic discovery systems.

The network is sponsored by the community and can be used for VPN solutions or as CDN.

It was named "GhostNet" only in 2021 and not relevant to previous implementations and application focuses. The network architecture can be explained by its title.

## Network Architecture and principles

GhostNet was born in far 2007 as application-level tool that masked trafic types to be discovered as public services by DPI hardware. It was epoch when geo services and location-based search outputs just started to usurp internet. A couple of network engineers just shared their thoughts about internet future. In few words, it sounded as: in 5 years all our content will be geo based and focused by cookies. So, these engineers proposed a concept that divided internet access to National zones, thinking that internet will be regulated by nations and will be divided to national and Others. So, it was proposed to consider any content delivery network nationally - oranized. In other words, cross-country and inside country architectures planned to be organized as principally different network types. This principle was implemented generally for unencrypted RDP trafiic masked as HTTP.

2011

Community was grown up by some broadcasters and VoIP service providers, Last of them built international convergient network and it was highly demanded to secure not only signalling, but physical level too. And of course, privacy was at the forefront. The goal was to create a VoIP network that can not be discovered as a network and its content was not ineterested for interception. Classic VPN solution as IPSEC or CISCO SSL were not taken into consideration - signatures could easy discover network type and hosts requirements were too high. So the proposal was: to take a broadcast and add sweep frame (normal was 25 fps, we added 1 or 2). Implementation took some time, and we got doubtful result. It worked fine, were prioritized by almost all networks as tv or video broadcast. But. Both sides had to be equipped with powerful CPU and used OS had limitations. Anyway, the main result was: MASK TRAFIC AS SOMETHING ELSE

2016

All internet trafic is encrypted. Everything becomes TLSed. Nice. All metadata is under control. Google offered WebSockets that became a kind of subtransport protocol, inside https.

Someone requested a solution where all network trafic must be protected from discovery by DPI systems or level 7 switches. Everyone said: VPN. And only one said: https. The core was not in using https as tls protected transport layer. The point was in generating some "garbage metadata" that could satisfy controlling systems and leave trafic as is without any attention. It was implemented first on the smartphone as a separated application. The result surprised - almost all state level firewalls were easily bypassed without any problem. But device level implementation was a disaster. Battery, heating, usability - everything was a problem. It was solved for one platform and took months. At the same time, same functionality was implemented for Raspberry that was a part of some remote branch complex and used before as a receiver for some IoT sensors. The result suprised - OS level secure channel control + arm productivity. All was reliable and simple. So, we focused on ARM based devices with Linux OS onboard. First router with that concept was built on unnamed OpenWRT powered 4G router. This solution had a number of unsolved problems. But vector was accepted. Next one was a Qualcomm MDM based router. Wow. Nice Linux distribution onboard, code aurora opensource libraries - all is fine. Someone compiled all libraries and modules, testers were informed. The date was July 15, 2016. The router with VPN onboard as a service that always On was deployed for end user testing.

2018

A number of router models later, after some years of fine tuning, privileged clients could receive routers that can work immediately from the box without contacting any support. 1000 devices were on the market. The network had to be refactored.

The network before was a corporation - oriented homogeneous service creation. When you have number of end users, it is a kind of constant rush. So, the network got balancing features. Noone from the community agreed to administer new network or organize it to become a "business". It was offered a concept that made this network become self-organized. The point was in having no central. Every node has a vector to connect with and a sector to discover. As was said before, first node was nationally friendly to the user (router). Next goal was to distant from end user and its activities. So, each router downloads security profiles and updates from the cloud. Then, each router becomes a kind of randomizer to provide maximum entropy on the network.

Next goal was to make it be self organized. The network grows up proportionately to sold devices.

2022

When you have a box on the table except a smartphone - anyone asks you "What's that". Only this year brought simple answer: it's hardware VPN. That's all tricsk. These simple words brought to the next question: and what's the price. Half was done.

Some commercials, who took 20-30 routers to organize branches network said: please start overseas sales. Your device is easy to use and really secure in compraison to software solutions. They got green light and full support from the community. Now hardware VPN is available to anyone who has $299 for that.

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<a href="https://ghostnet.pro">GhostNet site</a>

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