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StreisandEffect
streisand
Shell2014–2025
StreisandEffect / streisand · Archived

streisand

Streisand sets up a new server running your choice of WireGuard, OpenConnect, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, sslh, Stunnel, or a Tor bridge. It also generates custom instructions for all of these services. At the end of the run you are given an HTML file with instructions that can be shared with friends, family members, and fellow activists.

Web DevelopmentSystems & InfrastructureSecurity & PrivacyDevOps & CloudNetworking
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
114Distinct people
155Mentions
4Explicit recommenders
23.4KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Streisand sets up a new server running your choice of WireGuard, OpenConnect, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, sslh, Stunnel, or a Tor bridge. It also generates custom instructions for all of these services. At the end of the run you are given an HTML file with instructions that can be shared with friends, family members, and fellow activists.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

3 years ago I installed Project Streisand [0] on one of my Digitaocean droplets which configured automatically different VPN protocols and my favorite one has been Wireguard.…

babayega2 used a recommendation phrase. 4 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year155 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2014-07-24 21:43:37 UTC to 2025-10-25 16:04:17 UTC.

0102030402014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments20142015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 2 submissions, 5 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 22 mentions; 5 submissions, 17 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 38 mentions; 2 submissions, 36 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 28 mentions; 0 submissions, 28 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 30 mentions; 1 submissions, 29 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 1 submissions, 10 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 2 submissions, 4 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC725
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC22517
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC38236
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC28028
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC30129
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11110
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC624
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Streisand English, Français, 简体中文, Русский | Mirror Streisand Silence censorship. Automate the effect. The Internet can be a little unfair. It's way too easy for ISPs, telecoms, politicians, and corporations to block access to the sites and information that you care about. But breaking through these restrictions is tough. Or is it? If you have an account with a cloud computing provider, Streisand can set up a new node with many censorship-resistant VPN services nearly automatically. You'll need a little experience with a Unix command-line. (But without Streisand, it could take days for a skilled Unix administrator to configure these services securely!) At the end, you'll have a private website with software and instructions. Here's what a sample Streisand server looks like. There's a list of supported cloud providers; experts may be able to use Streisand to install on many other cloud providers. VPN services One type of tool that people use to avoid network censorship is a Virtual Private Network (VPN). There are many kinds of VPNs. Not all network censorship is alike; in some places, it changes from day to day. Streisand provides many different VPN services to try. (You don't have to install them all, though.) Some Streisand services include add-ons for further censorship and throttling resistance: OpenSSH Tinyproxy may be used as an HTTP proxy. OpenConnect / Cisco AnyConnect This protocol is widely used by multi-national corporations, and might not be blocked. OpenVPN Stunnel add-on available. Shadowsocks, The V2ray-plugin is installed to provide robust traffic evasion on hostile networks (especially those implementing quality of service (QOS) throttling). A private Tor bridge relay Obfsproxy with obfs4 available as an add-on. WireGuard, a modern high-performance protocol. See also: A more technical list of features A more technical list of services Cloud providers Amazon Web Services (AWS) Microsoft Azure Digital Ocean Google Compute Engine (GCE) Linode Rackspace Other providers We recommend using one of the above providers. If you are an expert and can set up a fresh Ubuntu 16.04 server elsewhere, there are "localhost" and "existing remote server" installation methods. For more information, see the advanced installation instructions. Installation You need command-line access to a Unix system. You can use Linux, BSD, or macOS; on Windows 10, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) counts as Linux. Once you're ready, see the full installation instructions. Things we want to do better Aside from a good deal of cleanup, we could really use: Easier setup. Faster adoption of new censorship-avoidance tools We're looking for help with both. If there is something that you think Streisand should do, or if you find a bug in its documentation or execution, please file a report on the Issue Tracker. Core Contributors Jay Carlson (@nopdotcom) Nick Clarke (@nickolasclarke) Joshua Lund (@jlund) Ali Makki (@alimakki) Daniel McCarney (@cpu) Corban Raun (@CorbanR) Acknowledgements Jason A. Donenfeld deserves a lot of credit for being brave enough to reimagine what a modern VPN should look like and for coming up with something as good as WireGuard. He has our sincere thanks for all of his patient help and high-quality feedback. We are grateful to Trevor Smith for his massive contributions. He suggested the Gateway approach, provided tons of invaluable feedback, made everything look better, and developed the HTML template that served as the inspiration to take things to the next level before Streisand's public release. Huge thanks to Paul Wouters of The Libreswan Project for his generous help troubleshooting the L2TP/IPsec setup. Starcadian's 'Sunset Blood' album was played on repeat approximately 300 times during the first few months of work on the project in early 2014.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

155 sources
someotherperson·Jan 20, 2024
Unfortunately, thanks to the Great Firewall of China, there has been a lot of resources put in to fingerprint VPNs and block them by state actors. Fortunately, however, there is equally years of some of the smartest minds on the planet working to bypass Chinese censorship, so there are some great OpenVPN alternatives. I really encourage you to look into something like Shadowsocks which Chinese people have found great success in using over the last several years. In your case, however, it's worth mentioning that if you can't connect at all then it's likely they've blocked the commercial IPs of the VPN nodes. It's quite sad that projects like Streisand[0] were archived, but I'm sure there are other alternatives that might make it just as easy to roll onto a server. [0] https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand
In Tell HN: Russia has started blocking OpenVPN/WireGuard connections
eadmund·Feb 6, 2023Submission

Ask HN: 2023 Alternative to the Streisand Project

The Streisand Project[0] provided easy installation of well-configured certs, VPNs and various other software on cloud instances. It was great for travelling internationally: run the script and after a few minutes one had a cloud instance and everything one needed to securely access the Internet through one’s own country. Unfortunately, it was archived in 2021. Is there anything in 2023 which approaches it? I’ve seen Algo[1], but I don’t believe it does as much to help one to avoid censorship. It’s also based on Ubuntu rather than Debian, which seems like a mistake with security-conscious server software. 0: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand 1: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
2 points · Open discussion
downrightmike·Mar 1, 2022
kind of a swiss army knife approach https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand Streisand sets up a new server running your choice of WireGuard, OpenConnect, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, sslh, Stunnel, or a Tor bridge. It also generates custom instructions for all of these services. At the end of the run you are given an HTML file with instructions that can be shared with friends, family members, and fellow activists.
In Ask HN: How to set up your own VPN for family in Russia
babayega2·Oct 12, 2021Recommendation phrase
3 years ago I installed Project Streisand [0] on one of my Digitaocean droplets which configured automatically different VPN protocols and my favorite one has been Wireguard. To this day I still use it on all my devices and it's only last month that I was made aware that the project has been discontinued (Why??). But my Wireguard VPN is still kicking. Works like a charm. On all devices. I can use restricted apps in Africa where my bank app and Disney plus/HBO do not works... [0]: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand
In Full WireGuard Support in ProtonVPN for Android
neither_color·Sep 18, 2021Recommendation phrase
I would like a VPN which has pluggable transports, and can, say, look like ssh or http or a game, and route over 20 random servers. I know of shadowsocks etc., but I could never get it to run. To be pedantic, shadowsocks is a proxy not a VPN but it does what you describe very well, and anecdotally it is better at circumventing the great firewall than wireguard(with its predictable signature it's quickly blocked). Granted I'm not in China anymore and you probably aren't there either, so both wireguard and shadowsocks work really well, but you might want to consider using a proxy over a VPN. If you've had trouble installing SS before, I recommend the streisand ansible script. Connect it to a VPS and it'll install wireguard, shadowsocks with V2ray plugin pointing to github for obfuscation, TOR, OpenVPN and more all at once. https://github.co
Read the rest
m/StreisandEffect/streisand If you're an iOS user and have multiple shadowsocks server, the shadowrocket app makes it very easy to make rulesets that look like so(don't worry there's a UI for it): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/a00789123/rules-bak/main/S... You can get specific like "BBC traffic goes through my london proxy, leave netflix un-proxied, twitter traffic goes through germany, etc." I also do the opposite of VPNing, where I use home PC as a server too so that when I'm traveling I don't get flagged with anti-fraud stuff when I want to check my bank apps and I can watch American Netflix without every worrying about it being blocked. edit: looks like streisand got archived at the same time as Ubuntu 16.04 got EOL'd. I didnt know because some of my instances have run for years. You can read the discussions on github for some alternative projects.
In WireGuard for Windows now uses high speed kernel implementation
neither_color·Jun 7, 2021
I'm glad Apple is normalizing private browsing, one thing that irks me about using VPNs is that unless you spin up your own instance from a VPS and stick to using that same IP consistently, you'll run into many websites putting up extra captchas and "we think you're a bot" messages, stores declining your purchase, your bank not letting you sign in, streaming sites like netflix blocking you, etc. Private browsing should be the default and websites should not assume you're up to something shady. I've used torguard, mullvad, expressvpn, and a few others and regularly ran into these issues. This is not a knock against using VPNs, it's just something people should be aware of when VPN services market their services as nothing but hassle-free private web surfing. In the end I've settled for just running streisand from a cheap VPS instance. Hope
Read the rest
fully with enough people using "private relay" websites will have no choice but treat this traffic like any other normal IPs. https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand
In Apple’s iCloud Plus bundles a VPN, private email, and HomeKit camera storage

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