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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

#42

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Of all the possible websites to choose as an example, Wikipedia is a strange choice since, unlike most websites, one can download its database and query it offline. For example,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

https://download.kiwix.org/zim/

Some other ways to search and read Wikipedia offline:

     XOWA: (S: XOWA)
     WikiTaxi: S: WikiTaxi (for Windows)
     aarddict: S: Aard Dictionary
     BzReader: S: BzReader and MzReader (for Windows)
     Selected Wikipedia articles as a printed document: Help:Printing
     Wiki as E-Book: S: E-book
     WikiFilter: S: WikiFilter
     Wikipedia on rockbox: S: Wikiviewer for Rockbox

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

#43

Post by darig »

jjeaff wrote: post #30
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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Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#44

Post by mgarciaisaia »

The real, important value of implementing IP over WhatsApp (in a proper, transparent way as other commenters are stating, and not from a chatbot as in the article) is not to avoid paying $5 for WiFi on a plane, but to protest the lack of net neutrality in an effective way.

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

#45

Post by DeathArrow »

I fail to see the practicality of this. Since the reason presented was not to pay for WiFi but you still have to pay a service like Twillio if you want to construct a Whatsapp to whatever gateway.

Also, why not construct a Whatsapp to HTTP gateway, since pictures and other binary data can be transformed with ease into text by something like base64 encoding. Sure, it would still not be practical, but it would be a better proof of concept.

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

#46

Post by jamal-kumar »

I've tried this before, it's a fucking nightmare lol it's not full-duplex at all so this severely limits your ability to do things at a reasonable speed for most shit. For me it was because at the time Zuckerbutt was giving out 'free' internet in the third world, but only for whatsapp, instagram, and facebook, so me and my friends wanted to see if this was exploitable, but it was just way too slow. It really gave me an impression of how fast TCP runs at normally which I took for granted before, and ideally bidirectionally fast.

For airport wifi I use a DNS tunnel or simple MAC rotation, for in-flight... well if they could make it quality someday maybe but every time I've shelled out like 50 bucks for an hour or whatever the ripoff deal is it doesn't work well enough to do anything. I hear the DNS tunnel method does work on some of them though, I should try that someday.

As a side note those in-flight screens in the backs of seats are interesting in this 'why the hell would they do this' kind of way. I managed to crash one when I noticed it had a USB port (bad idea on their part)... It was super easy, I tried to read the USB key but then just removed it when it was accessing the thing and the whole thing just went down. Apparently it was running x-windows on some type of *nix because I could see that default background with an X for the cursor. They should really get rid of those because I'm sure that they could be misused for nefarious ends.

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

#47

Post by mgarciaisaia »

toast0 wrote: post #35
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?

I worked on the technical side of WhatsApp's special pricing program (aka zero rating) from when it started, through integration with the Facebook Mobile Partner Portal until I left in late 2019. We provided partners IP addresses (well a list of cidr ip/subnet lengths) and email updates when IPs changed. Some partners wanted hostnames, but it wasn't usually effective to manage that way; hostnames seemed to work great…

I always thought WhatsApp published their list of IPs (segregated by standard chats vs media), but it seems they only share CIDR blocks with operators privately: https://www.whatsapp.com/cidr.txt

And you say there's no segregation between chat and media - and I trust your out of date info more than my completely made up guesses.

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

#48

Post by xeromal »

Drblessing wrote: post #3

Had this exact same idea on my last flight! If Telegram is an approved messenger you could also create a pretty unrestricted bot there too. Very cool.

On the planes I've flown with messaging enabled, I usually only see IMessage, whatsapp, and facebook messenger.

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

#49

Post by cmeacham98 »

rschachte wrote: post #31

One thing that would be interesting is scanning for open ports. Once you find an open port, make a Twilio API and text the number (Since most airlines enable texting via SMS/Whats APP) that triggers opening the port on your VPS that is opened on the airplane. Once you do that, you can tunnel into your VPS through the airlines open port or SSH into the machine. If you create a SOCKS5 proxy, then all traffic in your br…

It doesn't work like this in the real world. There isn't some magic port that just lets you bypass the firewall.

Certain ports sometimes have laxer filtering/restrictions, for example 53, 80, and 443 - but you already know these in advance.

You aren't going to find out that port 18741 magically gets you an unrestricted internet connection.

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

#50

Post by siraben »

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/

I can confirm that this still works on several US airlines especially if they have a free messaging option.
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