Turtle is a free and open source anonymous peer-to-peer network project facilitating free speech and sharing information by combining encryption with peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. Like no other anonymous P2P software, it allows users to share files and otherwise communicate without fear of legal sanctions or censorship.

The basic idea behind Turtle is to build a P2P overlay on top of pre-existing trust relationships among Turtle users. Each user acts as node in the overlay by running a copy of the Turtle client software. Unlike existing P2P networks, Turtle does not allow arbitrary nodes to connect and exchange information. Instead, each user establishes secure and authenticated channels with a limited number of other nodes/friends controlled by people he or she trusts (friends).

What Is the Turtle?

Turtle is a peer-to-peer architecture for safe sharing of sensitive data with full sender and receiver anonymity using only connections among trusted friends. This way, sharing information and transfering files is a kind of friendslist to trusted friends only. Technically, Turtle is a friend-to-friend (F2F) network - a special type of peer-to-peer network in which all your communication goes only to your trusted friends, and then to their friends, and so on, to the ultimate destination.

In the Turtle overlay, both queries and results move hop by hop; the net result is that information or files are only exchanged between people that trust each other and the network connections among Turtle friends is always encrypted. Consequently, a snooper or adversary has no way to determine who is requesting/providing information, and what that information is. Given this design, your Turtle network offers a number of useful security properties, such as confined damage in case of node compromise, and resilience against denial of service attacks (for more details on this see the Documents section).

Turtle friends can exchange information deemed "controversial'' or "risky'' (for example whistleblowers exposing government or corporate abuse) without being exposed to legal or economic pressure from parties that may want to censor or suppress this information. Such users are likely to be found in countries where the government routinely snoops on citizens' communications. It will also be attractive to people in all countries who value their privacy.

The Turtle Client

Under the sponsorship of NLnet, we are developing an open source client for Turtle networks. Download the currently available now and check for more details the Installation section). The Turtle client is a modular software design, it contains parts developed by us, as well as third-party open source components (some of which we had to modify). Currently, Turtle runs under Linux and we hope to port it to other platforms like Windows XP / Vista or MacOS - just check the Download section.

For the current Turtle client (with a sexy user interface), any Linux distribution and any desktop manager will suffice. The most complete GUI interface requires the KDE desktop environment. You can find out more about system requirements for installing Turtle in the user's manual.

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