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Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

alexanderell.is

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Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#21

Post by zamadatix »

mmh0000 wrote: post #10

Many years ago (2012) Delta inflight wifi would allow DNS queries out without paying. Being a very frequent flyer I used to run an ip-over-dns tunnel using Iodine[1]. It was slow but worked. I wonder if they’ve blocked that hole yet. [1] https://code.kryo.se/iodine/

When selecting my personal use domain I ended spent some time finding a short domain partly because it's convenient but partly because it meant more goodput via Iodine. I ended up on "ds.gy" as ds are my initials and it was the only TLD that domain wasn't sat on by squatters wanting to charge thousands.The ratio of people wanting to sell you short domains vs actually using them in any capacity was surprising.

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#23

Post by peeters »

cortesoft wrote: post #15
MauranKilom wrote: post #6

Wait, is this filtering based on IP or DNS? How do they make sure their whitelist remains up to date? (I assume it's HTTPS, so those are basically the only two options...) If it's DNS based, there should be simpler workarounds, so I guess it's just IP based?

It is pretty simple... your filter just makes periodic DNS requests to the desired allowed host and updates it's IP restrictions to the returned address. You also need to run the DNS resolver to return that same cached IP to prevent having the upstream DNS server return a different address. You also need to make sure the DNS server will only resolve the domains you want it to, because if you allow unfiltered dns requ…

These days with the prevalance of HTTPS, another option is to inspect the TLS client hello packet. To work well with load balancers etc, clients typically indicate the server name that they're trying to connect to (SNI - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication). That information is not encrypted. So you have both the dst IP and hostname in the initial packet.

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#24

Post by axiosgunnar »

stefan_ wrote: post #16
cortesoft wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty simple... your filter just makes periodic DNS requests to the desired allowed host and updates it's IP restrictions to the returned address. You also need to run the DNS resolver to return that same cached IP to prevent having the upstream DNS server return a different address. You also need to make sure the DNS server will only resolve the domains you want it to, because if you allow unfiltered dns requ…

I don't understand, what's the domain of.. WhatsApp? Not to mention you are just as likely to hit some Round-Robin configuration.

This is a very good question.

I would also assume that Whatsapp might change the servers used with updates of the app. How would Delta deal with that? Just wait for the complaints to come in?

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#26

Post by aaron695 »

userbinator wrote: post #7

I wonder if anyone has stated a general law along the lines of "if you can send and receive a bit, you can send and receive anything." The only issues ended up being that 1) WhatsApp messages are limited to 1600 characters Concidentally, that's not much bigger than the MTU of standard Ethernet. I don't know how "transparent" the data channel is with respect to non-ASCII (and probably Unicode), but if you use one of t…

> "if you can send and receive a bit, you can send and receive anything."

No, needs work.

Part 1 - No system can be 100%, then you hit the Two Generals' Problem..

Part 2 - Just because you can send a bit, that doesn't mean you can send 8 in a row. So you write a protocol, then they block that protocol, you adapt, they adapt etc etc

Maybe something like ~ any system where you have any control over information flow someone has written a protocol to send porn over it.

That's just jumping of Rule 34, you could change porn to something else

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#27

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

userbinator wrote: post #7

I wonder if anyone has stated a general law along the lines of "if you can send and receive a bit, you can send and receive anything." The only issues ended up being that 1) WhatsApp messages are limited to 1600 characters Concidentally, that's not much bigger than the MTU of standard Ethernet. I don't know how "transparent" the data channel is with respect to non-ASCII (and probably Unicode), but if you use one of t…

I actually thought that's what this blog was going to be about. Some kind of http encapsulation over Whatsapp. Was disappointed that it's just regular a chat bot

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#29

Post by quelltext »

This is basically a chat bot interface.

Google used to have a way to ask for searches via SMS a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J937N9m-XtE

But "tunneling" to me implies some transparent layer allowing you to browse Wikipedia via the same way of interaction.

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#30

Post by jjeaff »

joshvm wrote: post #19

My experience with in-flight message-only WiFi is that they're just really slow and the ping times are long. Some services are actively blocked, e.g. Skype wouldn't work at all even for text messages, but browsing the internet is usually allowed. My VPN wouldn't work, but I suspect it might have if I used an obfuscated connection instead of OpenVPN or whatever the default is (e.g. over SSL). I could load GMail in the…

I carry one of those tiny wireless routers in my carry on wherever I go. If I have to buy internet on the plane or if I am in a hotel that limits the number of devices, I always connect through the router and use it as an access point for all the other devices.

The other added benefit is that all my other devices already have my AP's wifi creds and will connect to it automatically.

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