Backers received notifications that stated “a review of the project uncovered evidence that it broke Kickstarter’s rules.”
Crowd funding website Kickstarter has suspended a hugely successful campaign for a piece of Internet security technology after a deluge of online criticism.
On Oct. 12, California-based developer August Germar posted a pitch for Anonabox, a router that promised to encrypt all your home Internet traffic using the TOR protocol (described here). The Kickstarter page promised the device delivered "anonymous Internet access and encryption, and helps to bypass censorship in places where access to the Internet is limited," and asked for $7,500 to keep the project going. Instead, more than $600,000 poured in from 8,900 backers.
"I had thought this would be like push-starting a car," Germar told Wired magazine (in a great article you should read). "Instead, it's been like being handcuffed to a rocket."
As of two days ago critics began to poke serious holes in the claims made on the Kickstarter page and in the media, chiefly on the /r/privacy Reddit page but also in Kickstarter's comments section. Germar attempted to answer some of his critics in using Reddit's Ask Me Anything platform. It did not go well.
Critics were unswayed by the answers Germar had to offer, and drilled him relentlessly on several crucial points:
- The claim that the main circuit board was custom made
- The claim that the hardware and software would be entirely open source
- The basic security of their method of accessing TOR
Testers were able to unencrypt the default password, and claimed that any Anonabox user might be able to intercept another Anonabox user's data and possibly expose TOR itself to breaches. As security researcher Steve Lord wrote on Twitter "I'm not having a pop at the @anonabox developers. I'm saying based on the /etc/ archive I looked at, don't use it. It's not safe. Such bugs."
With the backlash in full flight users began to rescind their pledges. And as of Friday afternoon, it appears Kickstarter was forced to act and has suspended the campaign. The Washington Post reported that backers received notifications that stated "a review of the project uncovered evidence that it broke Kickstarter's rules."
As Anonabox discovered, what the crowd giveth, the crowd can taketh away.
Shane Dingman