Test Your ISP

In May 2007, Comcast began engaging in protocol-specific interference with the activities of its subscribers. When confronted by users and by EFF, Comcast responded with denials and answers that told less than the whole story. In October 2007, however, after independent testing by the Associated Press and EFF, it became clear that Comcast was, in fact, interfering with BitTorrent, Gnutella, and potentially other common file sharing protocols employed by millions of Internet users. In specific, Comcast wa injecting forged RST packets into TCP communications, in an effort to disrupt certain protocols commonly used for file-sharing. The interference efforts were triggered by the protocol that the subscriber used, not by the number of connections made or amount of bandwidth used by the subscriber.


Coders Rights Project
EFFector Vol. 21, No. 27  August 6, 2008  editor@eff.org

A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
ISSN 1062-9424

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In our 480th issue:

* EFF IS PROUD TO UNVEIL THE CODERS' RIGHTS PROJECT,
building on EFF's longstanding efforts to protect
researchers, engineers, and developers that face serious
legal challenges to their cutting-edge work. The Coders'
Rights Project is home to new FAQs on reverse engineering
and vulnerability reporting, written to guide non-lawyers
through the murky legal issues surrounding these common
methods and practices in computer security research.
http://www.eff.org/issues/coders

EFF is also staffing an "EFF Is IN" booth at this week's
Black Hat technical security conference, providing legal
information on reverse engineering, vulnerability
reporting, and copyright law, as well as patent, trade
secret, and free speech issues. Through education and legal
work, EFF hopes to continue promoting innovation and
safeguarding the rights of curious tinkerers and hackers on
the digital frontier.
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/08/05-0

* ON THE EVE OF THE FCC'S ACTION AGAINST COMCAST, EFF
RELEASED "SWITZERLAND," a software tool that empowers
customers to test the integrity of their Internet
communications. Part of EFF's "Test Your ISP" project, the
open-source, command-line tool is designed to detect the
modification or injection of packets of data, giving
tech-savvy users the power to investigate any meddling with
their Internet traffic.
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/07/31