Will Scott

Category: Post

  • SP3

    I started running a public sp3 server today. It’s a small side-project I’ve hacked together over the last couple weeks to make it easier for people to play with packet spoofing. The server works similarly to a public proxy, but with the trade-off that while it won’t send high-volumes of traffic, it will allow you to send arbitrary IPv4 packets from any source you want.

    There are a few fun applications that need this capability that I’ve been thinking of: helping with NAT holepunching of TCP connections; characterizing firewall routing policies; and for cover traffic in circumvention protocols. I think there are others as well, so I wanted to start running a server to see what people come up with.

    The code is on github.

  • Cyprus

    Cyprus

    Last spring after visiting Turkey I spent a week on vacation in Cyprus. I’ve written up some thoughts on the politics at play and the experience of visiting that border. Really a fascinating place.

  • Internet Censorship

    I had the privilege last week of talking at the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress about the state of Internet Censorship in 2015 and the major developments in blocking and measurements last year.

    The talk is now online and available for streaming. It’s meant as a primer on the topic, and to show the growing normalization and corporate control of filtering.

  • The state of Internet Censorship

    The state of Internet Censorship

    I’ll be presenting next week at 32C3 on the state of Internet access, transparency, and measurement. Lots of the work is done each year on measuring and learning about the state of access, but this phenomenon with growing relevance to many countries is poorly publicized. Much of this is a fear that being too public about what can be measured will make the network operators move to even more opaque techniques, since in many instances these systems are seen to thrive in structures without accountability.

    Needless to say, it has been a busy year in the space, with increased funding for the measurement community and a multitude of new policy in response to ISIS and other perceived threatening uses of Internet Speech.

    I’m excited to be heading back to Germany for the holidays, and hope to provide a reasonable survey of what’s out there and make the network measurement field a bit more accessible!

  • 3rd International conference of PUST

    3rd International conference of PUST

    icopust3

    I returned to PUST this fall just in time for ICOPUST3, a bi-annual conference hosted by the university and one of the few instances of international academic engagement performed by the university.

    A bit of background: I spoke on my research at ICOPUST2, the previous instance of this conference held two years ago, and my first time visiting the university. The conference by design is a multi-track affair covering the full breadth of academics (from computer science to agriculture) taught at the university.

    This year, I acted as the session chair for the computer science track of the conference, which proved to be quite rewarding. I’m encouraged by the continued academic engagement present at the conference and occurring at the university as a whole.

  • Tech Community

    Having spent the last few days at CCCamp, I am incredibly jealous of the community that exists in Germany. cbase, the physical center of the community, has existed for 20 years, and has created a really powerful movement. One of the aspects of the berlin free software community is the tight connection between technologists and artists that exists there. From this event my take away is that tech can and does create culture, and that one of the most important things we can do is foster that community and make it ours.

  • Cycling Ladakh

    Cycling Ladakh

    I spent the last couple weeks bicycling through northern India. It was a great trip with spectacular scenery, good food, and a fascinating culture.

    With Ravi, a friend from the networks lab at UW, I arrived in Leh, a city at 11,500 feet in the far north of India. We chose the Himalayas to avoid the stifling heat that otherwise covers the region in the summer. After altitude adjustment, we took a 4 day bike ride over the 240km road to Kargil. The area was really cool – new, very ragged mountains and high plains. The shift in culture that we experienced on the ride, from a Buddhist dominant culture in Leh to a more Islamic influenced Kashmir / Central Asian culture in Kargil.


    indianature

  • What’s Up with Open HTTP Proxies

    I’ll be giving a talk next week at CCCamp on the Open Proxy ecosystem, following up on some work I did last year looking at the operators, users, and traffic.

  • Cascadia Fest

    The video of my talk last month on scanning the Internet using Node.js has been published by Cascadia Fest.

  • DaTong

    DaTong

    Wrote up a long-form post about visiting DaTong, China in 2009.