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Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

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Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#261

Post by eightails »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #218
elif wrote: post #188

I would keep in mind that the US has weird antiterror laws about assisting enemies and also laws which construe bypassing system designs as hacking. For instance, Virgil Griffith is being held and charged for giving a high level description of bitcoin transactions at an academic conference in North Korea. This is incredibly more specific and more technical of an act. https://www.coindesk.com/usa-v-virgil-griffith-wha…

I wonder how many First Amendment lawyers would be champing at the bit to take a case where a prosecutor was dumb enough to charge someone with a crime for assisting dissidents to communicate.

Problem is that to many from the other side of the Atlantic "dissidents" look an awful lot like "terrorists".

Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#262

Post by chmod775 »

viro wrote: post #19
chmod775 wrote: post #17

Why can't they just ship signal with a Tor client? This is precisely what Tor was built for. They can donate some money to charities running Tor nodes while they're at it, or run some themselves. Iran tried to censor Tor too, but it's pretty much impossible to do so fully. At least the Tor devs are usually on top of it, while Signal is inexperienced dealing with things like this.

Tor is is blocked in Iran.

Iran isn't able to detect bridges using obfs4 with DPI as of now (as far as I know).

So no, it's not 'blocked'. They're just trying. Mostly by blocking bridges they know of.

Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#263

Post by secfirstmd »

FWIW right now to any Iranian friends on here. We have Umbrella in Persian/Fa now available. It's a massive open source guide to digital and physical security. Everything from how to use Signal to how to deal with arrest.

More info: https://www.secfirst.org.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/umbrella-security/id1453715310

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...

Web (Beta): https://umbrella.secfirst.org

Github: https://github.com/securityfirst/

Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#264

Post by andrewzah »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #259
jb775 wrote: post #251

Ironic how people want to help de-censor what's considered to be an enemy nation (by the media), but are ok with censoring half their next-door neighbors based on politics.

Nobody here thinks anyone in the US should be unable to use Signal.

...Until it gets branded as a white supremacist tool for encrypted communications.

Call me extremely pessimistic but events like Jan 6. will be used as justification to start attacking applications that offer end-to-end encryption, and encryption in general. Just like 9/11 was used to justify eroding certain civil liberties.

Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#265

Post by beirut_bootleg »

reactspa wrote: post #250
doublestandard2 wrote: post #236

It's an irony how American companies try circumvents another country's law (regardless of whether you call it censorship or not, it is still a law) and boast about it. Yet, in the US these companies help the mainstream narrative to enforce censorship by banning (Google and Apple App market) or simply not offering other point of views basic hosting services (AWS). I am an Iranian and don't agree with all of our govern…

Am honestly not trolling here although it will sound like it: Can someone please explain to me why it's a OK to reconnect Iranians to Signal, but not Trump supporters to Twitter (the ones censored and banned by Twitter)?

Because Signal didn't block Iran? This is false equivalence.

Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#266

Post by [deleted] »

reactspa wrote: post #250
doublestandard2 wrote: post #236

It's an irony how American companies try circumvents another country's law (regardless of whether you call it censorship or not, it is still a law) and boast about it. Yet, in the US these companies help the mainstream narrative to enforce censorship by banning (Google and Apple App market) or simply not offering other point of views basic hosting services (AWS). I am an Iranian and don't agree with all of our govern…

Am honestly not trolling here although it will sound like it: Can someone please explain to me why it's a OK to reconnect Iranians to Signal, but not Trump supporters to Twitter (the ones censored and banned by Twitter)?

[deleted]

Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#267

Post by amir734jj »

stunt wrote: post #238

So their government is blocking Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Telegram, Signal, BBC, CNN, Netflix, and probably many other social and media platforms. Meanwhile we are blocking Iranians to access Docker, Slack, Gitlab, Google Code, Github(Github until recently), Paypal, Apple Store, Play Store, AWS, Coursera, Adobe, Nvidia, AVG, Avast, Symantec, McAfee, Matlab!!, Oracle and many more. It should be really fun to use Int…

It is not fun. Trust me. I am an Iranian and I used to sell VPN back in Iran when I was in high school. I had hundreds of users and I was threatened with prosecution and I left the country. Literally everything is blocked except government or university websites. On the positive side, you can Torrent as much as you want or download any music or hack websites and it is completely fine :)

Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#268

Post by iudqnolq »

2cb wrote: post #233
stonesweep wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been mulling this over today, as your ability to get the name/IP of the proxy has to be censorship resistant as well. The best idea I've had so far is using a CNAME response to a very common DNS query which would pass a basic filter, like I'd ask for "mail.mydomain.com" and it would respond with a CNAME pointing to the actual proxy. I have dead domains which I have configured with null records for MX and stuff (…

Using innocent sounding CNAMEs on abandoned domains is definitely a smart idea. I’ve definitely got some old domains kicking about, I’ll see how far off they are from expiration and do something similar if they have at least a few months left in them. The proxies themselves can also be hosted at normal sounding domains and subdomains like cdn.technology.memes or whatever. And when you point other domains to them as C…

If your scheme for conveying innocent sounding proxy domains requires it's own innocent sounding domains what have you added?

Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#269

Post by eternalban »

whimsicalism wrote: post #169
eternalban wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is indeed. Iran does not shy away from blocking large swaths of the internet > ran would not hesitate to block all AWS IP addresses as a solution DNS will not resolve any .ir (.coms that are iranian) domains here in US, afaikt.

Not at all true. Try http://www.president.ir/en

That does not resolve for me. Neither do any of the news sites. I even tried government ministries, such as en.mop.ir.

    simple$ ping president.ir/en
    ping: cannot resolve president.ir/en: Unknown host  
    simple$ ping en.mop.ir
    ping: cannot resolve en.mop.ir: Unknown host   
    simple$ ping tehrantimes.com
    ping: cannot resolve tehrantimes.com: Unknown host
    simple$ ping presstv.com
    ping: cannot resolve presstv.com: Unknown host

Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal

#270

Post by robertfw »

sergiosgc wrote: post #62

Signal should be federated. This censorship problem would not exist, or would be organically routed around, were the service federated. Without federation, Signal is just another stepping stone in the long path of eventually abandoned instant messengers, all the way back from ICQ. We will get to an SMTP-like protocol, and email-like service, at some point. If not Signal, some other one.

Have a look at matrix - https://matrix.org/
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