So, that's definitely better than nothing, but your browser isn't the only thing -- though these days, it is a very important thing -- that talks to the Internet. If, for example, you're using a lemmy client to read this, I'd bet that it's good odds that it doesn't have SOCKS support.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if someone has made VPN software that intercepts connections and acts as a proxy SOCKS client, which would make it work more like a traditional VPN if you can reach a remote SOCKS server, though maybe with a performance hit.
googles
Yeah, okay, looks like stunnel can do this on Linux. So it's a thing.
You don't need a 100% solution, though, to have a pretty big impact on society. Combine technical barriers with it just being easier to not think about what's going on outside, maybe some chilling effects from legally going after people who do start doing things that you don't like (viewing websites, spreading information, etc), and you can control people's information environment a lot. Make using circumvention solutions illegal -- okay, maybe you can bypass their system if you don't get caught, but do you want to risk it? Make creating or spreading circumvention solutions really illegal. Do you want to risk getting in a lot of trouble so that random other person can get unrestricted or unmonitored Internet access?
On that note, I was reading about the way North Korea does it in an article from someone who got out of North Korea. That is about as close as it gets to a 100% solution. Only a few thousand people are authorized to get Internet access. You need to apply to use the Internet with a couple of days lead time. Each pair of computers has a "librarian" monitoring what the Internet user on each side is doing, and every five minutes or so the computer will halt with whatever you were doing on the screen and require fingerprint re-authorization from the "librarian" to continue. Users are not allowed to view pages in Korean, just English and Chinese (I assume because most information out there that you'd have to go outside North Korea to get access to is likely available in either English or Chinese, and they definitely don't want people seeing anything out of South Korea).
That pretty much screws North Korea in terms of access to information, is a costly solution, but if you place an absolute priority on control of the information environment, North Korea does prove that it's possible to take a society there.
North Korea does prove that it’s possible to take a society there.
I don't think NK took themselves there, they were already there when the internet was invented. Easier to limit access to few people when you have draconian measures in place when access becomes possible.
Having a society that already widely has access to one that has extremely limited access is a lot more difficult.
Unfortunately it would be trivial to block an SSH tunnel like this. I recall reading news 10 years ago (maybe even earlier) some foreign journalist tried this at a Beijing hotel room and got shut down in minutes. That was when people are still using PPTP and L2TP protocols to get around censorship, Wireguard and shadowsocks wouldn't be born for another couple years.
Far from trivial unless you’re willing to brick ssh completely, or at least cripple a bunch of non-VPN uses for tunneling. Of course it’s trivial to just block ssh outright, or block tunneling above a certain bandwidth. But that would also block, as an example, most remote IDE sessions, loopback-only server management frontends, etc.
This is actually pretty interesting, thanks for sharing. Although i live in a third world country that doesnt care about anything at all including piracy, but this tunneling thing looks pretty handy
I live in Russia and I have vps with wireguard vpn in Netherlands. At the current moment it works for me pretty well except the some connection failures two days ago. But they were very short. But I don't know how long my vps will be accessible with these fucking blocking.
Can you confirm that it is still working fine on normal home internet but not on cellular data? Have been back to Russia multiple times per year (family reasons) and none vpn ever works on cellular network. Some work at home and places.
My own vpn is to my house in different country. Wireguard. That has always been working over home wifi here (not cellular). Even until now.
For now it works both via mobile data and home provider. My mobile operator is Tinkoff. The home Internet provider - City Telekom. But sometimes it losses connection for several minutes. But generally it works well.
I love all my fellow Russians and Ukrainians who rise above the brainwashing that this commenter is demonstrating.
Fuck patriotism and slogans, that's what politicians want you to do to die for them. All wars would be over in a day if people just realized this as politicians can't fight their wars without people like this commenter.
Russia is less terrorist than Azerbaijan, but the latter isn't even being sanctioned (and there's been an ICJ decision against them, but everybody ignores it) for starving out a little country of 120k people right now in a medieval siege, and openly stating that they are doing exactly that.
I don't think Ukraine has lots of problems. At least the aggressor there is recognized for what it is and the victim is recognized for what it is and armed by half the world.
I don't think Ukraine deserves any attention, in fact, since in Artsakh they support Azerbaijan. Support of now finally actual genocide happening is what makes me think that.
Russian likes to threaten the world with nukes - nuclear war would inevitably lead to a nuclear holocaust that would cause the near extinction of the human species.
I don't give a flying fuck about Azerbaijan. Russia is terrorizing the entire species of humanity. Until you're threatening to wipe out the entire planet, you are not a terrorist on the same level as Russia.
What I'd expected based on what I've seen so far was that the Kremlin would not care what protocols are used, just whether the a given VPN provider was in Russia and whether it provided the government with access to monitor traffic in the VPN.
So, use whatever VPN protocol you want to talk to a VPN provider where we can monitor or block traffic by seeing inside the VPN. You don't get to talk to any VPN providers for which we can't do that, like ones outside Russia, and the Russian government will do what it can to detect and block such protocols when they pass somewhere outside of Russia.
But that doesn't seem to fit with what the article says is happening.
The media in Russia reports that the reason behind this is that the country isn’t banning specific VPNs. Instead, it’s putting restrictions on the protocols these services use.
According to appleinsider.ru, the two protocols that are subject to the restrictions are:
OpenVPN
WireGuard
A Russian VPN provider, Terona VPN, confirmed the recent restrictions and said its users are reporting difficulties using the service. It’s now preparing to switch to new protocols that are more resistant to blocking.
I don't see what blocking those protocols internal to Russia buys the Kremlin -- if Terona conformed to Russian rules on state access to the VPN, I don't see how the Kremlin benefits from blocking them.
And I don't see why Russia would want to permit through other protocols, though maybe there are just the only protocols that they've gotten around to blocking.
EDIT: Okay, maybe Terona doesn't conform to state rules or something and there is whitelisting of VPN providers in Russia actually happening. Looking at their VK page, it looks like Terona's top selling point is "VPN access to free internet" and they have a bunch of country flags of countries outside of Russia. So maybe Russia is blocking VPN connectivity at the point that it exits Russia, and it's affecting Terona users who are trying to use a VPN to access the Internet outside Russia, which would be in line with what I would have expected.
Your edit makes sense, it would be possible to block all VPN traffic but just whitelist traffic from trusted IP addresses (like those in Russia). But I don't think we have enough info to say for sure that's what's happening.
I don't know why some moron downvoted you, but the answer is maybe. For reference, I have always bypassed SSH firewall blocking by sneaking SSH packets within https.
The only way this won't be possible is if the government enforces installing a certificate to use the internet, so that they can do a man-in-the-middle-attack. I heard this is already being done in Afghanistan.
Can someone explain from a technical standpoint how they can block OpenVPN running on port 443? my admittedly limited understanding is that port 443 is the common port for https. If they blocked that port wouldn't that mean that they would be blocking nearly the entire internet?
I don't know what they actually do but one possibly is to look for (absence of) the TLS handshake. Or maybe they simply infect all devices on the Chinese market with MITM certificates to be able to decrypt all TLS encrypted traffic. Should be easy to force companies to do that in such a country.
The port isn’t their focus, they’re looking at the protocol that is being used, regardless of the port. The protocol is still visible when not doing deep packet inspection. That’s why there suggesting a socks proxy for Russian citizens, because that uses HTTPS to tunnel traffic, so it wouldn’t be caught up in protocol analysis.
You can analyze the traffic, detect common patterns and also detect source of the request. Russian IT specialists are now using very complex solutions to come around the block which work a lot like MITM attacks.
From my understanding, they are most likely just blocking the defualt port of wireguard / openvpn and IPs associated with the VPN servers of VPN providers they dont like.
If they wanted to block VPN traffic over 443 to any IP, they would have to do deep packet inspection, which I would imagine is infeasible for Russia.
Supposedly, the Chinese great firewall does use deep packet inspection, so it is possible to do this at the country level.
They specifically mention it's on the protocol level which would imply it's doing more than just blocking some ports. Not sure why you'd think China could pull that off but it would be infeasible for Russia?
vpn traffic isnt directly hidden, but it can be helped along.
youd need to encapsulate your vpn traffic in a different protocol, make sure you shape your traffic to expected values for that protocol and then avoid known vpn endpoints.
Neither. They detect new secure connections outside of Russia. Then connect to the same host and check if it has a VPN handshake. If it does - the host gets blocked. No need for DPI or anything complex and 100% ban rate.
If you're savvy enough, sure. But for the lay person who doesn't want a clouded view of the world, they likely won't have the same resources or technical capabilities.
It's not without drawback though. SSH tunnel consumes a lot more cpu compared to wireguard. If your vps has a weak cpu, it might not even able to fully saturate a 1gbps connection due to cpu bottleneck on certain ciphers. If you're using a mobile device, it will drain your battery faster than wireguard.
After a discussion that lasted for way too long, it appears that they like censorship.
They think that this is a perfectly reasonable argument: https://youtu.be/QFgcqB8-AxE and that the government knows better and thus information should be suppressed.
Most open source vpn protocols, afaik, do not obfuscate what they are, because they're not designed to work in the presence of a hostile operator. They only encrypt the user data. That is, they will carry information in their header that they are such and such vpn protocol, but the data payload will be encrypted.
You can open up wireshark and see for yourself. Wireshark can very easily recognize and even filter wireguard packets regardless of port number. I've used it to debug my firewall setups.
In the past when I needed a VPN in such a situation, I had to resort to a paid option where the VPN provider had their own protocol which did try to obfuscate the nature of the protocol.
1.4 million people in a country where most people are brainwashed do-nothings would be enough to take out a group of the few hundred cowards and their war criminal czar. (thank you @[email protected] )