US Govt suspected of shutting down new WiFi router for whistleblowers

ProxyHam is a portable WiFi router that costs $200 and mask users’ IP addresses. Rhino Security Labs, the company that developed ProxyHam was scheduled to debut it at the Def Con convention in Las Vegas in August, but on Friday Rhino tweeted that they were scrapping the project without explaining why.

Here’s the description of the presentation that Benjamin Caudill, founder of Rhino Security Labs was scheduled to give at Def Con (the text has been stricken):

Paranoia and ProxyHam: High-Stakes Anonymity on the Internet

Benjamin Caudill Founder, Rhino Security Labs

CANCELLED

From the US to China and beyond, anonymity on the internet is under fire – particularly for whistleblowers. National interests are pushing for greater control and monitoring of internet content, often invoking harsh punishments for informers and journalists, if caught. While a range of technologies (such as ToR) can provide some level of anonymity, a fundamental flaw still exists: a direct relationship between IP address and physical location. If your true IP is ever uncovered, it’s game over – a significant threat when your adversary owns the infrastructure.

To resolve this issue, I present ProxyHam, a hardware device which utilizes both WiFi and the 900Mhz band to act as a hardware proxy, routing local traffic through a far-off wireless network – and significantly increasing the difficulty in identifying the true source of the traffic. In addition to a demonstration of the device itself, full hardware schematics and code will be made freely available.

From Techcrunch:

“While it is pure speculation on my part, since no one can speak on record,” Steve Ragan wrote for CSO Online. “It would look as if a higher power – namely the U.S. Government – has put their foot down and killed this talk.”

Meanwhile, Ars Technica claims that there is a privacy device that is still available that is the “same… or even better” than ProxyHam: “ProxyGambit, a $235 device that allows people to access an Internet connection from anywhere in the world without revealing their true location or IP address.”