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Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

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Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#251

Post by kube-system »

sschueller wrote: post #105
brightball wrote: post #99

This is why I’m excited about Starlink.

Starlink is not the solution. A private entity then decides who gets what and the US government will also meddle in what is allowed. Do you think Starlink would be allowed to route TikTok traffic if it got banned?

> Do you think Starlink would be allowed to route TikTok traffic if it got banned?

Yes, without a doubt it would be allowed. The "TikTok ban" has already been signed by Trump, and nothing in the order prohibits AT&T, Verizon, Comcast or any other ISP from routing the traffic.

The executive branch doesn't have authority to prohibit legal speech. It has some powers to regulate commerce, that's it.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#252

Post by petre »

YarickR2 wrote: post #201
petre wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, like that stopped Radio Free Europe delivering real news into the Eastern block. They can imprison people with terminals but they can't radio shield their airspace.

Now we're calling state-sponsored propaganda outlet "real news"

You haven't lived in a communist country to get the feel of real propaganda my friend. Radio Free Europe was a breath of fresh air compared to official news. You should probably see the Goodbye Lenin movie.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#254

Post by petre »

ivalm wrote: post #231
petre wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I donct know if they jammed anything, they built radios and TV sets with Eastern band. But that was easily circumvented.

They explicitly jammed radio free Europe , for example.

Who did so, the USSR? A certain Eastern leader paid Carlos the Jackal to perpetrate a terror attack at Radio Free Europe. Of course that didn't stop shut it down.

https://pressroom.rferl.org/a/carlos-the-jackal-and-the-bomb...

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#255

Post by yabones »

ardy42 wrote: post #250
yabones wrote: post #190

I have some close acquaintances in BY, so this has been hard. We saw that (at least as of 8 PM UTC) outbound connections to HTTP servers wasn't really a problem. A fresh ec2 box with a basic web server wasn't effected. So, early yesterday I set up an OpenVPN server on ec2 (eu-west-1) to try to get some slow but functional internet access. What we saw was that about 15-30 seconds after the TLS handshake the connection…

> Tonight we're going to try using an xor tcp proxy to obfuscate the VPN traffic. You might want to pad the traffic too. IIRC, the GFW can detect many kinds of VPN connections based off of a sequence of characteristic packet lengths during the handshake.

That's a great idea! Unfortunately it looks like they've fully locked down their network since about 20:00 (EDT), so that will have to wait for tomorrow to try out.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#256

Post by p1necone »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #243
gruez wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a tyrannical government is willing to cut off internet access, what makes you think they won't also ban ham radio transmissions (enforcing via violent means) as well?

That's completely impractical. Internet has a central switch you can flip, they have bigger problems now than driving around a fairly large country looking for antennas. If I installed a raduo antenna on top of an apartment block, the average cop wont distinguish it from a 4G antenna or whatever else installed nearby. Plus you have to climb the rooftip and inspect it, imagine the amount of time an manpower that would…

Can't they just jam the frequencies instead?

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#257

Post by baybal2 »

dylz wrote: post #200
yabones wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure. My information is largely based on observations made by people that live or have lived in BY. It's sort of common knowledge there that regardless which ISP or carrier you're on there's always one hop in common when traceroute'ing outside of the country.

As far as I can tell, virtually every network marked BY has a common transit or peer of AS6697 Republican Unitary Telecommunication Enterprise Beltelecom

Any Belorussian ASes behind it?

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#258

Post by Bendingo »

petre wrote: post #124
gpm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* International treaties and national laws prohibit sending radio signals into the country if the countries government doesn't give you permission. Space ISPs are very unlikely to do so without permission except at the behest of their home government.

Yeah, like that stopped Radio Free Europe delivering real news into the Eastern block. They can imprison people with terminals but they can't radio shield their airspace.

Like Radio Free Europe is "real news"

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#259

Post by dylz »

baybal2 wrote: post #257
dylz wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, virtually every network marked BY has a common transit or peer of AS6697 Republican Unitary Telecommunication Enterprise Beltelecom

Any Belorussian ASes behind it?

Assuming the index of 144 total ASNs is correct marked BY, there are a handful of cloud providers/university systems (that I can count in one hand) that might have their own connectivity, but anything remotely advertised as eyeball goes through "Beltelecom" or "Business Network Ltd" (which in turn goes through "Beltelecom" or "National Traffic Exchange Center" (60330))

At a casual glance, look at how Beltelecom is one of the very, very few that has any international peers just based on the flags: https://bgp.he.net/AS6697#_peers

Then look at the others:

https://bgp.he.net/AS12406#_peers

https://bgp.he.net/AS60330#_peers

https://bgp.he.net/AS25106#_peers

This is similar to to Iran's ITC/TIC (there's a handful of them, pop in 12880, 49666, 48159, etc. onto bgp.he for a quick look) where they are the in-between to international peers and domestic peers.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#260

Post by wavefunction »

macinjosh wrote: post #241
linuxftw wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, let's not forget, the Ukrainian government was just over thrown by a western-backed coup. Of course, you won't know that from the Wikipedia cliff notes, but that's what happened.

Exactly, reminds me of when Asst. Sec. of State Victoria Nuland went and handed out sandwiches to supporters of the coup in the Maidan! And we have the nerve to be upset when other countries meddle in our affairs? How would we feel if a high-level Russian diplomat went out on the streets in the DC protests and handed out food to members of antifa or the alt-right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztt72mpTPXA

But did we get free sandwiches? Then I'll see your false equivalency with an escalation of the rhetoric. DENIED
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