—–Original Message—– From: Robert Harley [mailto:Robert.Harley [at] inria [dot] fr] Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2001 3:44 AM To: fork [at] xent.ics.uci [dot] edu Subject: Legal way to defeat AOL’s third-party AIM blocking
The idea is to have some volunteers repeatedly log in to AIM via a proxy. The proxy can observe the transaction and then stick the observed hash of part of aim.exe onto a Freenet node. Lather, rinse, repeat. =:-)
Seems to me that AOL could respond by increasing the frequency at which they change their challenge. >:-(
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid/04/16/1931237 ============================================================================Legal way to defeat AOL’s third-party AIM blocking
As you already know, AOL recently started blocking third-party instant messaging products from using its network. […]
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What follows is a brief overview of the clever technique AOL is using for its access restrictions, and then a proposal for defeating this scheme in a completely legal way. This method (which is completely generic and not tied to AOL in particular) may provide a blueprint for overcoming this type of blocking restriction by other companies in the future. Think of it as a kind of non-violent resistance.
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I propose the development of an AIM proxy server. This server could be run by anybody, as it would be extremely simple. All it would do is accept incoming AIM messages, and echo these messages to the proper AIM server. […]
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To implement this system, all a Jabber server needs to do is run a local Freenet node. Of course, many of the values that AOL will request are not available on that node, but if many people participate in the system, most will be. Remember that there are something like 60,000 Jabber users, at last count. It won’t take that many of them to keep the various Freenet caches current. As a special bonus, this architecture gives us a free way to keep AOL from IP-blocking known third-party clients: use the proxy servers! Remember that the AIM proxy looks completely identical to a legitimate NAT-based firewall to AOL. […]
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R, rapidly becoming even more of a crypto-anarchist than he was before.
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