Original author(s) Written in Python, C, C# | Development status Active | |
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Stable release 2.9.1 / 2 January 2017; 2 months ago (2017-01-02) Platform Android, iOS, Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows Type Internet censorship circumvention | ||
Shadowsocks is an open-source proxy project, widely used in mainland China to circumvent Internet censorship. It was created in 2012 by a Chinese programmer named "clowwindy", and multiple implementations of the protocol have been made available since.
Contents
Takedown
On 22 August 2015, "clowwindy" announced in a GitHub thread that they had been contacted by the police and could no longer maintain the project. The code of the project was subsequently branched with a removal notice. Three days later on August 25, another proxy application, GoAgent, also had its GitHub repository removed. The removal of the projects was met with media attention, with news outlets speculating about the possible connection between the takedowns and a DDoS targeting GitHub which happened several days later. Danny O'Brien, from Electronic Frontier Foundation, published a statement on the matter.
Despite the takedown, collaborators of the project have continued with the development of the project.
ShadowsocksR
ShadowsocksR is a fork of the original project, claimed to be superior in terms of security and stability. Upon release, it was found to violate the General Public License by not having the source code of the C# client available. It was also criticized for its solution to the alleged security issues in the source project. Both projects are currently under development.