However, unlike an SSH tunnel (based on the RSA encryption technology, but with more obvious characteristics when creating a tunnel that can be caught and utilized by GFW), Shadowsocks can also be a proxy for the UDP traffic. That’s to say, it also needs to use a specific transit server to complete the data transmission. The operating principle of Shadowsocks is basically the same with other types (HTTP, Socks, VPN, SSH) of proxy tools.
#Shadowsocks gfwlist mac os#
After that, the contribution of open source community developers made it evolve into an open-source project based on multiple development languages (Python, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, etc.), multiple running environments and multiple platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, OpenWrt – a popular router firmware for achieving automatic bypassing of Internet censorship), and it continues to be maintained and improved until now. Shadowsocks was first created (using Python only) by clowwindy from China in 2012, and was forcibly suspended by the Chinese government in 2015.
In China and many other countries, it’s widely used to break through the GFW-like Internet blockade and censorship and access the disturbed, blocked, or shielded web sites and web services around the world, such as Google, YouTube, FaceBook/Twitter, and more. It uses the SOCKS5 proxy protocol (similar to SSH tunnel), and runs very, very fast. Among them, Shadowsocks (AKA: 影梭) is a free, open-source, cross-platform, encrypted, and secure small proxy project from China. As is known to all, the serious network blockade and censorship in Mainland China (namely the GFW founded in 1998) has given rise to numerous excellent proxy software from China, including but not limited to: Freegate, UltraSurf, SoftEther VPN, GoAgent, Shadowsocks, cow, Lantern, and more.