HN Explorer

From Facebook's Hackathon, TCP re-implemented over chat in a post-SOPA world

122 points by xxbondsxx ↗ HN
For Facebook's Hackathon finals between the finalists from 15 different colleges, myself and the two other hackers from UC Berkeley decided to imagine a post-apocalyptic world in which SOPA has passed and is enforced _to the letter_. We took it to the extreme by imagining that file transfer is no longer possible for US citizens. Corporations now control the internet, and we are forced to use only their products.

To re-implement file transfer, we decided to hijack Facebook's speedy chat service to do our own packet transmission. This is the way it works:

-A python localhost server converts binary data into base64 ASCII and forms packets with uuid's, timestamps, seqnums, and the whole 9 yards.

-These packets get pumped over localhost to a user script (aka a Greasemonkey script) running on Facebook.com.

-This user script handles the scrubbing of incoming chat messages (packets) and populating the chatbox with outgoing packets.

-Facebook does _not_ make sending a chat message easy with custom JS, so in order to actually send a chat message, we signal the python localhost server to run a bash script that tells applescript to emulate a keydown event. Hacked up, I know, but it works! Also, this works for any application (desktop, flash embedded, etc) because it's as legit as a real keypress.

Just pumping the packets was the first challenge which we finished around 2am. The second obstacle was that facebook decides to drop about 50% of our packets after the first 15, so we then implemented a crude TCP style acknowledgement/handshake method that ensures each packet gets delivered. Implementing TCP inside of TCP... as meta as you get.

If you want to watch a video of a nyan cat GIF transmission, go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=tk5m0mqsrFs#t=74s

The main point is that despite even the most extreme legal restrictions on the internet, the next generation will always find a way :D

Github: https://github.com/pcottle/emotiface

Happy to answer any questions. Techcrunch also showed up and filmed / walked around the office (which was surprising considering the relationship between the two). I remember the techcrunch guy specifically saying "I feel like I'm at the Deathstar" when he walked through Facebook's double doors.

25 comments

[ 23.0 ms ] story [ 1312 ms ] thread
noonespecial
Its like modern day duck-and-cover drills for the plutocratic apocalypse.
steve-howard
Is Bert the Turtle on hand for PR?
noonespecial
Be like Bert. Know how to encapsulate whenever you sense danger.
tomjen3
Yes. After all Bert the Turtle is very alert.
geuis
Could you link to the bit in the github repo where you're emulating key presses between applescript and python?
xxbondsxx
Sure! It's as simple as running the system command "osascript" and passing in the file here:

https://github.com/pcottle/emotiface/blob/master/backend/key...

As you can see, it just keeps hitting return 20 times (for 20 packets). The JS does the majority of the heavy lifting. It continually checks the chat textarea and waits for it to empty (when a keydown happens). When that happens, it loads the next packet and waits again. Code snippet:

//check if it's nothing

    console.log('waiting for next return key');

    var theVal = $j('.fbNubFlyoutInner').find('textarea').val();

    console.log(theVal);

    if(theVal)
    {

        //need to wait

        var timeoutStr = "keydownCheck('" + filename + "'," + String(numPacket) + ");";

        setTimeout(timeoutStr,keydownSleep);

        return;
    }

    //actually put the next packet in

    var packetText = JSON.stringify(files[filename].packetMap[numPacket]);

    $j('.fbNubFlyoutInner').find('textarea').val(packetText);
Link:

https://github.com/pcottle/emotiface/blob/master/backend/sta...

geuis
Thanks, this will help out with a hackety thing I've been wanting to do.
xtacy
Actually, I am not sure why you would implement TCP inside TCP. You could have just tunneled the IP packets (raw sockets, or NF_QUEUE or some equivalent) and TCP would have taken care of everything like ACKs and packet retransmissions.

There are various interesting ways to tunnel TCP inside many other protocols like ICMP, DNS, etc. The underlying principle is that since many protocols run over IP, as long as you're able to route IP, you're pretty much done.

EDIT: I didn't mean to sound pessimistic. :)

xxbondsxx
What you said is completely true, but we were going for 1984-esque post apocalyptic scenarios. Imagine every ISP shuts down traffic to all domains / addresses except a small whitelist of mega corporations (fox.net, facebook, msn, etc). Great Firewall of China status, but far far worse. You literally have no way to transmit data over the internet except through "using" a website on a browser.

Obviously not a scenario that we will see any time soon (hopefully), but it was certainly a fun challenge to work on. It was also extremely hilarious to see two computers, side-by-side, chat each other actual network packets inside a browser.

xtacy
Interesting worst case scenario. (Random thought) Encoding data inside video streams might give more bandwidth, as chat msgs seem to be heavily throttled.
xxbondsxx
Good idea! That would definitely require ripping open the plugin or compiling your own (and swapping it out when the page is loaded), but it would certainly enable a ton more bandwidth. I was really impressed when I first saw this image stenography on the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital_steganogr...

If you couldn't inject your own code into the chat plugin (or had trouble faking the packets from your own), you could do the extremely low-tech solution of videochatting a screen of a slowly-changing QR code. It would make encoding super simple and still allow for a decent amount of bandwidth transmission :D

Damnit! That's a good idea. 3k bytes per QR code, a conservative estimate of 15 fps, and you are at decent 45k a second with no code injection!

gresrun
You could fit many QR codes on screen at a time.

Or, better yet, you could just send raw pixels as bits, white = 0, black = 1. With 1024x768 HD video, that's a possible 768K/Frame => 22.5M/s @ 30 FPS!

X4
Fun I had a similar idea on April this year, I thought about using streaming png's (nodejs) as information source, first I was thinking about using some qr-code technique to make transmissions secure. Then I thought, I could use something better like qr-code multiplication inside of a png stream that looks like a video with some qr-codes that flash from time to time. A smart-phone application would make the data readable again (decryption). You would need to whisper a secret key personally into your friends ear, so he can enter the sequence into his smartphone app. All-in-all it was a concept to use png's like videos with "cut-scenes" a-like qr-code's that get multiplied and cross-checksummed afterwards. Might sound stupid, but think about it. I wasn't approaching to solve your post-apocalyptic scenario, but to make something speedier+secure than wifi/bluetooth/infrared.

What do you think? A friend who's exceptional at maths (I'm not) told me it's not possible, however I don't like when naysayers come and tell it's impossible. Still it demotivated me. Do you think it's possible?

Explained in two words: "Optical Transmission"

philh
Are there any lossless video formats in common use? One is unlikely to be introduced if not, so you might need a lot more than one pixel/bit.

But at the same time, you don't need to limit to black-and-white. Even just black/white/red/green/blue/purple/yellow/turquoise would be four times as much bandwidth, and I would be very surprised if even lossy video couldn't reliably distingish up to 64 colours.

I don't think many people currently have 22.5M/s download speeds anyway, so it's probably not a big deal.

ontoillogical
People used to do this way back when. Here's a video from a 90's TV show called NetCafe. At some point they take a break to stream some downloads to the viewers. They ask you to plugin their TV Modem to get some random shareware. Then they show a screen with a rapidly animated 2d barcode for a couple minutes. http://www.archive.org/details/nc101_hackers

I wonder how many people actually owned a TV modem. It had to be a tiny market.

By the way, I highly recommend watching the episode, they interview Aleph One and some other old-school hackers.

xxbondsxx
Wowwww this is amazingly old school. Talk about time travel.

That "download blast" section looks like it has a significant amount of bandwidth though. It's cool to see the idea implemented though

imrehg
Cool! Could there be a "bittorrent-style" transmission as well, with the group chat feature? :)

Edit: I mean multiple source, of this is already "broadcasted", so no need to take care of multiple receivers.

xxbondsxx
Certainly! It's actually 90% there already. All incoming packets are handled the same way regardless of the sender. The JS does this by querying DOM for a div with the "fbChatMessage" class but without the "read" class. Once it has this div, it processes it and then marks it as read by adding the "read" class. It does not depend on which chat box this div lives in though, so if you received 50 packets from one friend and 50 from another (and they had the same UUID and filename), it would compile and display as normal.

The only challenge would be dividing up the packet requesting, but you could do this manually by pasting in two handshake packets, one with startat at 0 and the other with startat at 50:

{"handshake":true,"uuid":"somethingRandom",type:"whichToSend","startAt":0,"filename":"nyancat"}

{"handshake":true,"uuid":"somethingRandom",type:"whichToSend","startAt":50,"filename":"nyancat"}

And then boom! Receive as normal and enjoy your ultra-slow bittorrent-style bandwidth

X4
even better, but I know there were huge efforts to detect these type of transmission and block them entirely. If you're with comcast you probably know about it. Many providers use deep-packet inspection now! :(
ptarjan
Great job on the project and thanks for coming to the hackathon.
xxbondsxx
No problem Paul! Thanks for hosting everything and being an awesome emcee.
lowglow
As someone who grew up with the internet being a symbol of hope and freedom, it's depressing for me to even have to imagine this being a reality.
tomjen3
To me it is not depressing but uplifting.

Yes taking over the inter is a diaster, but even something like that isn't enoughvto close the gates completely.

And the truth is, they can't.

code-dog
Now the idea of open digital communication is well established, legal frameworks will not be able to do anything but slow it down. Whilst the US government is producing laws to stop free/open digital coms they are also developing stuff like internet-in-a-suitcase which is designed to get around 'repressive governments' which do to allow open access to the internet. This indicates the stupidity of using legal systems to control communication in this way.