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Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

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Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#171

Post by pmlnr »

MrDisposable wrote: post #162

Russian here. Good job Roskomnadzor. You just taught quite a few people to use VPN -- including me. And, as a side benefit, you created another image problem for Putin's regime (as if he needed any more of that). I already had Bitlocker on all my PCs, 2FA everywhere, moved from Gmail to Fastmail, and VPN was one of the last privacy-related things I procrastinated on. Now I have VPN on all my desktops and on my phone,…

VPN doesn't give you privacy; it only allows you to bypass blocks (and introduce yourself to blocks in other countries or services though). VPN providers can still log your every move.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#172

Post by andrepd »

nh2 wrote: post #120
fastball wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you actually care about security/privacy, why not just use Signal?

One argument might be "because Signal * has (almost) no tests, * has no CI (at least I could find none), * lacks some basic features competitors have, * sometimes doesn't ring when you call, and * they just closed all 1100 open issues without reading their contents [1]." Don't get me wrong, I think Signal is a great idea and have contributed some code to it, but these look like some red flags to me. Obviously hard to…

All those issues were closed, as it is explained in your link, because they lacked debug logs/steps to reproduce the problem/etc. It's not feasible to dedicate enormous amounts of resources to try to address those issues. You're welcome to re-open them, properly this time, if you want.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#173

Post by andrepd »

abhiminator wrote: post #152
huhtenberg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may also mean that Facebook is complying with the Russian government demands for at-will access to WhatsApp and Messenger content.

> WhatsApp and Messenger content. (emphasis mine) Isn't WhatsApp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted making it next to impossible even for developers (Facebook Inc. in this case) to access the transmitted messages' content?

What use is it being end-to-end encrypted if, for all you know, they store the keys, or even decrypt and store all contents on their servers...

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#174

Post by pentae »

kokx wrote: post #121

So, Telegram is blocked. But Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are still online. Hence, this is pushing users of a (relatively) country-neutral service, towards more American services. Seems like a weird move for Russia.

Any reasonable person would deduce that Facebook/American services are simply compliant.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#175

Post by panarky »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #101
foka86 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not everywhere, unfortunately. In my location it's almost impossible to use it without VPN. It also became difficult to send files through it.

You can see here how russia has started to "burn": http://downdetector.com/status/telegram/map/ (However this might apply: https://www.xkcd.com/1138/ )

Big outages in Kyiv and Milan too?

https://imgur.com/a/3biqq

(These look like outliers even considering xkcd population density.)

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#176

Post by donkeyd »

andrepd wrote: post #173
abhiminator wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WhatsApp and Messenger content. (emphasis mine) Isn't WhatsApp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted making it next to impossible even for developers (Facebook Inc. in this case) to access the transmitted messages' content?

What use is it being end-to-end encrypted if, for all you know, they store the keys, or even decrypt and store all contents on their servers...

It's decrypted on my phone in their app. Theoretically, what stops them from connecting to my phone and reading the decrypted content from there?

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#178

Post by nstart »

craigds wrote: post #26

Why block Telegram and not .. all the others? Whatsapp, Signal, Viber, ... Are they objecting to the use of encryption? Because everyone uses encryption almost all the time for everything everywhere. The cat has been well and truly released from that bag. Are they just going to turn off the internet altogether?

So much misinformation in the replies here.

Russians do make up a huge list of telegrams overall userbase. But most importantly, whatsapp and viber are end to end encrypted. Whatsapp uses signal. Viber uses a signal inspired encryption format. The common ground between both is that every single message is encrypted using a different secret key that is deleted after the message is received and decrypted on the device. Whatsapp and Viber have no way to give chat details even if they wanted to. Provided that they follow the protocol, and all accounts seem to point to the fact they do, then there is no backdoor or secret key they can give to any government.

Telegram in contrast uses a set of master keys to encrypt the conversations using RSA and aes256 as they travel through the servers. The keys are split across multiple servers residing in multiple jurisdictions so that legally, a government would have to seek permission to obtain each part of the key from a separate state.

Basically, this means that at the end of the day, if telegram ever forgoes its integrity (based off its public statements), every message will suddenly become decryptable.

That last point is what seems to really make telegram worth targeting.

Re: Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram

#180

Post by csydas »

huhtenberg wrote: post #131
kokx wrote: post #121

So, Telegram is blocked. But Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are still online. Hence, this is pushing users of a (relatively) country-neutral service, towards more American services. Seems like a weird move for Russia.

This may also mean that Facebook is complying with the Russian government demands for at-will access to WhatsApp and Messenger content.

I think a much simpler and more elegant answer is "they didn't think of that, they just want to block Telegram."

As someone in Russia, the block pretty much only hinders use of the legitimate services, not of Telegram. Numerous services exist to allow it to continue, and the block is a hack-job to try to prove a point.

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