The Alphabet brooder tasked with tackling “ some of the toughest planetary security challenge , ” from online extremism and cybersecurity to regime censorship , has rolled outnew toolaimed at hold against attacks on innocent speech around the globe .
Jigsawon Wednesday announced the release of a new app , Intra , plan to protect Android users against the manipulation of DNS resolutions , a commonly used practice among inhibitory regimes to prohibit users from accessing info deemed off - limits by the state .
In Iran , for case , certain websites redirect to a government security review page because , once query , internet service providers , act on the regime ’s behalf , automatically return a sham IP computer address . The same is true of China ’s Great Firewall ( GFW ) , which fall false and , often alternatively , seemingly erratic IP addresses in response to DNS queries to government - draw a blank field . Hundreds of site are besides blocked in Pakistan , and the list goes on .
DNS manipulation , often used in conjunction with IP block , provides tyrannic authorities the agency to suppress information viewed by those in power as objectionable , or scrupulously or politically unacceptable . When a exploiter attempts to reach an internet domain—gizmodo.com , for instance — the data processor query Domain Name System ( DNS ) servers for the IP computer address linked to that domain . In the grammatical case of China , the GFW hold a monolithic list of blacklisted domains . When a somebody using the Taiwanese net attempt to get hold of a blacklisted site , the GFW will not pair the domain with its actual IP address , but instead injects a phony DNS reply containing a ill-timed IP , often leading to a random , more government - favorable site instead .
Intra works , according to its creators , by just cipher the drug user ’s connection to the DNS server . By default , it points to Google ’s own DNS servers ( Jigsaw ’s parent company , Alphabet , also have Google ) , but for drug user who choose to use another ( Cloudflareor IBM’sQuad9 , for object lesson ) those options can be changed within the app .
agree to CNET , DNS inquiry will be write in code by default in an updated version of Android Pie . Reportedly , however , around 80 percentage of Android users are n’t using the latest interlingual rendition of the Android operating organization . For those , Intra is now available inGoogle sport .
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