HP builds darknet

TWO HP INSECURITY experts are planning to tell the Black Hat USA 2009 security conference next week about their plans to build a browser-based darknet.

Darknets are overt, private computer networks used for ultra-secure communications and file sharing.

Billy Hoffman, manager of HP's web security group, and Matt Wood, senior security researcher at HP, have been using the new generation of JavaScript engines in Chrome's V8 and Firefox's TraceMonkey to carry out the encryption necessary to make a darknet work easily.

Apparently they have developed a prototype browser-based darknet called Veiled as proof of concept.

Information Week  said that the pair don't intend to release the software or make the source code available.

The goal of their presentation is to show how capable the web browser has become as an application platform and to discuss the technical challenges they had to overcome to make their prototype.

The HP pair say that by using such tools it is a lot easier for people to create darknets. Since most people don't need to be that mysterious, we guess that means criminals, terrorists, spooks, investment bankers, governments, marketeers and other evil-doers will be able to use the technology.

Wood's system uses the server as a router. Veiled merges servers together so that clients on different servers can communicate directly.

Veiled shouldn't be seen as a replacement for an anonymity tool like Tor, said Wood. But it will help those wanting to create communities quickly and take them down quickly, he added. µ