I2P 0.6.1.4 and I2Phex 0.1.1.34 released

[matrix2012]

about I2P:

What is I2P?

I2P is an anonymous network, exposing a simple layer that applications can use to anonymously and securely send messages to each other. The network itself is strictly message based (ala IP), but there is a library available to allow reliable streaming communication on top of it (ala TCP). All communication is end to end encrypted (in total there are four layers of encryption used when sending a message), and even the end points ("destinations") are cryptographic identifiers (essentially a pair of public keys).
How does it work?

To anonymize the messages sent, each client application has their I2P "router" build a few inbound and outbound "tunnels" - a sequence of peers that pass messages in one direction (to and from the client, respectively). In turn, when a client wants to send a message to another client, the client passes that message out one of their outbound tunnels targeting one of the other client's inbound tunnels, eventually reaching the destination. Every participant in the network choses the length of these tunnels, and in doing so, makes a tradeoff between anonymity, latency, and throughput according to their own needs. The result is that the number of peers relaying each end to end message is the absolute minimum necessary to meet both the sender's and the receiver's threat model.

The first time a client wants to contact another client, they make a query against the fully distributed "network database" - a custom structured DHT based off the Kademlia algorithm. This is done to find the other client's inbound tunnels efficiently, but subsequent messages between them usually includes that data so no further network database lookups are required.

More details about how I2P works are available.
What can you do with it?

Within the I2P network, applications are not restricted in how they can communicate - those that typically use UDP can make use of the base I2P functionality, and those that typically use TCP can use the TCP-like streaming library. We have a generic TCP/I2P bridge application ("I2PTunnel") that enables people to forward TCP streams into the I2P network as well as to receive streams out of the network and forward them towards a specific TCP/IP address.

I2PTunnel is currently used to let people run their own anonymous website ("eepsite") by running a normal webserver and pointing an I2PTunnel 'server' at it, which people can access anonymously over I2P with a normal web browser by running an I2PTunnel HTTP proxy ("eepproxy"). In addition, we use the same technique to run an anonymous IRC network (where the IRC server is hosted anonymously, and standard IRC clients use an I2PTunnel to contact it). There are other application development efforts going on as well, such as one to build an optimized swarming file transfer application (ala BitTorrent), a distributed data store (ala Freenet / MNet), and a blogging system (a fully distributed LiveJournal), but those are not ready for use yet.

I2P is not inherently an "outproxy" network - the client you send a message to is the cryptographic identifier, not some IP address, so the message must be addressed to someone runnig I2P. However, it is possible for that client to be an outproxy, allowing you to anonymously make use of their internet connection. To demonstrate this, the "eepproxy" will accept normal non-I2P URLs (e.g. "http://www.i2p.net") and forward them to a specific destination that runs a squid HTTP proxy, allowing simple anonymous browsing of the normal web. Simple outproxies like that are not viable in the long run for several resons (including the cost of running one as well as the anonymity and security issues they introduce), but in certain circumstances the technique could be appropriate.

The I2P development team is an open group, welcome to all who are interested in getting involved, and all of the code is open source. The core I2P SDK and the current router implementation is done in Java (currently working with both sun and kaffe, gcj support planned for later), and there is a simple socket based API for accessing the network from other languages (with a C library available, and both Python and Perl in development). The network is actively being developed and has not yet reached the 1.0 release, but the current roadmap describes our schedule.

Note that it is likely that there are bugs in the software and there has been insufficient peer review to date. People should not use I2P prior to the 1.0 release without understanding the risks of their actions.

I2P-Mail> ( with I2P SMTP / I2P POP3/inclusive Mail from/to Internet )
I2P-IRC> (irc over I2P)
I2P-Bittorrent>I2P-BT,Azureus with I2P plugin, I2Psnark(cvs only cli ))
i2phex >I2P gnutella client)
I2P eepsites> (anonymous hsoted I2P sites)
I2P-Jabber> (IM )
I2P-CVS>
I2P-NNTP Dienste>
and other things....

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi all, the past two weeks of development has brought us the new
0.6.1.4 release. There are some substantial improvements to the
streaming lib code, a new bundled bittorrent client (i2psnark),
improved load balancing, better congestion handling, bugfixes to
help I2Phex along, a new PRNG (Fortuna), improvements to Syndie,
and some throttling improvements for low bandwidth peers. This
release is backwards compatible, so upgrading is highly
recommended.

As always the full list of changes can be found online at
http://dev.i2p.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cg...y.txt?rev=HEAD

Instructions for installing or upgrading is over on
http://www.i2p.net/download

If anyone runs into any trouble, please jump onto #i2p [1] or the
forum [2] and we'll try to help out.

[1] http://forum.i2p.net/viewtopic.php?t=952
[2] http://forum.i2p.net/viewforum.php?f=10

=jr
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i2phex is an adapted Gnutella client for anonymous filesharing on top of the I2P network. If you plan to use i2phex you should be aware of the beta status of this software (although it works mostly fine).

Latest changes in cvs:

- Close a leaking file handle (thanks Complication!)
- Security fix to remove the Phex code which allows incoming requests to initiate local downloads (thanks GregorK!)

The full installation package can be found at:
http://dev.i2p.net/i2p/i2phex_0.1.1.34_install.exe (pgp sig [link: dev.i2p.net])

Windows users can just run that, installing it into a directory "next to" your I2P installation directory (e.g. if you install I2P in the default location - C:\Program Files\i2p, you should install I2Phex in C:\Program Files\i2phex). *nix/osx users can instead run "java -jar i2phex_0.1.1.34_install.exe", installing it next to their I2P install.

The installer should create an i2phex icon on your desktop and a start menu folder with i2phex and an uninstaller. Whenever you want to run I2Phex, just use either of those, or run the I2Phex.exe in the I2Phex installation directory. *nix/osx users can just use "java -jar i2phex.exe" in the I2Phex installation directory, or can work through the optional shell scripts.

There is also a non-exe version up at:
http://dev.i2p.net/i2p/i2phex_0.1.1.34.zip (pgp sig])

This is the plain i2phex without an installer - just unzip it and run the included I2Phex.exe. You won't get a start menu, desktop icon, or uninstaller, but you may not care.

There is also i2phex's "source" release available, but that only includes the partial export that phex's original "makeRelease" bundles. To build from source, I recommend:
Code:
cvs -d server:anoncvs@cvs.i2p.net/cvsroot co i2phex
cd build
ant makeRelease


This builds release/i2phex_0.1.1.34_install.exe and the rest. That ant script assumes ../i2p/ is the i2p source directory, with everything built, plus the contents of ../i2p/build/ available at ../i2p/lib/ (this last restriction will be removed later).

The 0.1.1.34 release has been tagged in CVS as "i2phex_0_1_1_34".

Thanks again Complication and Gre
gorK for the update!