Operator makes useable tools to help people around the world with censorship, security, and privacy.
The Shapeshifter project provides network protocol shapeshifting technology (also sometimes referred to as obfuscation). The purpose of this technology is to change the characteristics of network traffic so that it is not identified and subsequently blocked by network filtering devices.
There are two components to Shapeshifter: transports and the dispatcher. Each transport provide different approach to shapeshifting. These transports are provided as a Go library which can be integrated directly into applications. The dispatcher is a command line tool which provides a proxy that wraps the transport library. It has several different proxy modes and can proxy both TCP and UDP traffic.
If you are a tool developer working in the Go programming language, then you probably want to use the transports library directly in your application. https://github.com/OperatorFoundation/shapeshifter-transports
If you want an end user that is trying to circumvent filtering on your network, or you are a developer that wants to add pluggable transports to an existing tool that is not written in the Go programming language, then you probably want the dispatcher. Please note that familiarity with executing programs on the command line is necessary to use this tool. https://github.com/OperatorFoundation/shapeshifter-dispatcher
If you are looking for a complete, easy-to-use VPN that incorporates shapeshifting technology and has a graphical user interface, consider Moonbounce, an application for macOS which incorporates shapeshifting without the need to write code or use the command line.
This is the repository for the shapeshifter-dispatcher command line proxy tool. If you are looking for the transports is provides, they are here: https://github.com/OperatorFoundation/shapeshifter-transports
The purpose of the dispatcher is to provide different proxy interfaces to using transports. Through the use of these proxies, application traffic can be sent over the network in a shapeshifted form that bypasses network filtering, allowing the application to work on networks where it would otherwise be blocked or heavily throttled.
The dispatcher currently supports the following proxy modes:
- SOCKS5 (with optional PT 2.0 authentication protocol)
- Transparent TCP
- Transparent UDP
- STUN UDP
The transports used by shapeshifter-dispatcher follow the Go Transport API in the Pluggable Transports Specification v3.0.
The dispatcher currently supports the following transports:
- Replicant
- Optimizer
- shadow (Shadowsocks)
Note: obs4 is no longer supported. We recommend using Shadow in it's place.
The dispatcher is written in the Go programming language. To compile it you need to install Go 1.17 or higher:
https://golang.org/doc/install
If you already have Go installed, make sure it is a compatible version:
go version
The version should be 1.17 or higher.
If you get the error "go: command not found", then trying exiting your terminal and starting a new one.
Get the git repository for shapeshifter-disptacher:
git clone https://github.com/OperatorFoundation/shapeshifter-dispatcher.git
Go into that directory and build the command line executable:
cd shapeshifter-dispatcher
go install
This will fetch the source code for shapeshifter-dispatcher, and all the dependencies, compile everything, and put the result in /bin/shapeshifter-dispatcher
You can find your GOPATH with:
go env GOPATH
Use either -client or -server to place the proxy into client or server mode, respectively. Use -state to specify a directory to put transports state information. Use -transports to specify which transports to launch. Use -optionsFile to specify the directory where your config file is located
The default proxy mode is SOCKS5 (with optional PT 2.1 authentication protocol), which can only proxy SOCKS5-aware TCP connections. For some transports, the proxied connection will also need to know how to speak the PT 1.0 authentication protocol. This requirement varies by the transport used.
Another TCP proxy mode is available, Transparent TCP, by using the -transparent flag. In this mode, the proxy listens on a socket and any data from incoming connections is forwarded over the transport.
UDP proxying can be enabled with the -udp flag. The default UDP mode is STUN packet proxying. This requires that the application only send STUN packets, so works for protocols such as WebRTC, which are based on top of STUN.
Another UDP proxy mode is available, Transparent UDP, by using the -transparent flag with the -udp flag. In this mode, the proxy listens on a UDP socket and any incoming packets are forwarded over the transport.
Only one proxy mode can be used at a time.
Replicant is Operator's flagship transport which can be tuned for each adversary.
Here are example command lines to run the dispatcher with the Replicant transport:
For this example to work, you need an application server running. You can use netcat to run a simple server on port 3333:
nc -l 3333
Now launch the transport server, telling it where to find the application server:
<GOPATH>/bin/shapeshifter-dispatcher -transparent -server -state state -target 127.0.0.1:3333 -transports Replicant -bindaddr Replicant-127.0.0.1:2222 -optionsFile ConfigFiles/ReplicantServerConfigV3.json -logLevel DEBUG -enableLogging
This runs the server in transparent TCP proxy mode. The directory "state" is used to hold transport state. The destination that the server will proxy to is 127.0.0.1, port 3333. The Replicant transport is enabled and bound to the address 127.0.0.1 and the port 2222. Logging is enabled and set to DEBUG level. To access the Log for debugging purposes, look at state/dispatcher.log
To use Replicant, a config file is needed. A sample config file, located in ConfigFiles/ReplicantServerConfigV3.json, is provided purely for educational purposes and should not be used in actual production.
<GOPATH>/bin/shapeshifter-dispatcher -transparent -client -state state -transports Replicant -proxylistenaddr 127.0.0.1:1443 -optionsFile ConfigFiles/ReplicantClientConfigV3.json -logLevel DEBUG -enableLogging
This runs the client in transparent TCP proxy mode. The directory "state" is used to hold transport state. The address of the server is specified as 127.0.0.1, port 2222. This is the same address as was specified on the server command line above. For this demo to work, the dispatcher server needs to be running on this host and port. The Replicant transport is enabled and bound to the address 127.0.0.1 and the port 1443.
To use Replicant, a config file is needed. A sample config file, located in ConfigFiles/ReplicantClientConfigV3.json, is provided purely for educational purposes and should not be used in actual production.
Once the client is running, you can connect to the client address, which in this case is 127.0.0.1, port 1443. For instance, you can telnet to this address:
telnet 127.0.0.1 1443
Any bytes sent over this connection will be forwarded through the transport server to the application server, which in the case of this demo is a netcat server. You can also type bytes into the netcat server and they will appear on the telnet client, once again being routed over the transport.
Using command line flags is convenient for testing. However, when launching the dispatcher automatically from inside of an application, another option is to use environment variables. Most of the functionality specified by command line flags can also be set using environment variables instead.
SOCKS5 mode is an older mode inherited from the PT1.0 specification and updated in PT2.0. Despite the name, SOCKS5 mode does not provide a SOCKS proxy for use with SOCKS clients such as Firefox. Rather it uses the SOCKS5 protocol as a way to communicate between a host application and Shapeshifter Dispatcher. The host application must be aware of the special semantics used by this mode. While it is possible to configure Shapeshifter Dispatcher to provide a traditional SOCKS proxy for use with SOCKS clients such as Firefox, that is not covered here.
SOCKS5 mode is not recommended for most users, use Transparent TCP mode instead.
Here are example command lines to run the dispatcher in SOCKS5 mode with the Replicant transport:
For this example to work, you need an application server running. You can use netcat to run a simple server on port 3333:
nc -l 3333
Now launch the transport server, telling it where to find the application server:
<GOPATH>/bin/shapeshifter-dispatcher -server -state state -target 127.0.0.1:3333 -bindaddr shadow-127.0.0.1:2222 -transports shadow -optionsFile ConfigFiles/shadowServer.json -logLevel DEBUG -enableLogging
This runs the server in the default mode, which is SOCKS5 mode. The directory "state" is used to hold transport state. The destination that the server will proxy to is 127.0.0.1, port 3333. The Replicant transport is enabled and bound to the address 127.0.0.1 and the port 2222. Logging is enabled and set to DEBUG level. To access the Log for debugging purposes, look at state/dispatcher.log
To use Replicant, a config file is needed. A sample config file, ReplicantServerConfigV3.json, is provided purely for educational purposes and should not be used in actual production.
<GOPATH>/bin/shapeshifter-dispatcher -client -state state -transports shadow -proxylistenaddr 127.0.0.1:1443 -optionsFile ConfigFiles/shadowClient.json -logLevel DEBUG -enableLogging
This runs the client in the default mode, which is SOCKS5 mode. The directory "state" is used to hold transport state. The Replicant transport is enabled and bound to the address 127.0.0.1 and the port 1443. Please note that you do not specify the server address with -target in SOCKS5 mode. This happens below, in the tsocks step.
To use Replicant, a config file is needed. A sample config file, ReplicantClientConfigV3.json, is provided purely for educational purposes and should not be used in actual production.
Once the client is running, you can connect to the client address, which in this case is 127.0.0.1, port 1443. You will need to use a SOCKS5 client. Normally, this would be a host application that you would write. For basic testing, you can install a tool such as tsocks.
For instance, on macOS, install tsocks:
brew tap Anakros/homebrew-tsocks
brew install --HEAD tsocks
nano /usr/local/etc/tsocks.conf
In your tsocks configuration file, add the following lines to tell it where to find the dispatcher client:
server = 127.0.0.1
server_port = 1443
server_type = 5
It is important to check to make sure that your tsocks configuration is correct. If you have the wrong server address or port, tsocks will connect you directly to the transport server and this will give confusing results.
Now you can use telnet to connect to the server and tsocks to route the traffic through SOCKS:
tsocks telnet 127.0.0.1 2222
It is important to note that the address and port you telnet to is the address of the transport server. This information is passed through the SOCKS5 protocol to the client by tsocks and it is how the client learns where the server is located.
At this point, you should have a normal connection through the transport to the application server. Any bytes sent over this connection will be forwarded through the transport server to the application server, which in the case of this demo is a netcat server. You can also type bytes into the netcat server and they will appear on the telnet client, once again being routed over the transport.
Please note that this is not an open SOCKS proxy that allows you to connect to any address on the Internet. You can only connect to the application server associated with the transport server. The SOCKS protocol is only used as a method of communication between a host application and the transport client. While we use tsocks as the host application for this explanation, normally the host application would be a custom application provided by you.
SOCKS5 mode is not recommended for most users, use Transparent TCP mode instead.
To generate a new pair of configs for any of the supported transports, run the following command:
<GOPATH>/bin/shapeshifter-dispatcher -generateConfig -transport <transport name> -serverIP <serverIP:Port>
For Replicant, you can also add the flags -toneburst and/or -polish if you would like to enable the Starburst toneburst and the Darkstar polish respectively
shapeshifter-dispatcher is descended from the Tor project's "obfs4proxy" tool.
- David Fifield for goptlib
- Adam Langley for the Go Elligator implementation.
- Philipp Winter for the ScrambleSuit protocol.
- Shadowsocks was developed by the Shadowsocks team.
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