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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

#71

Post by McNutty »

kmarc wrote: post #66

Cool pet project, admirable engineering etc. My comment is about something else: net neutrality, as someone already mentioned. I was teaching English in Laos for school kids. I was amazed that some of their families struggle with providing (nutritious enough) food for their children, yet, everyone had smartphones with always-on 4G,even in the countryside - however, no WiFi almost anywhere. The brains of these kids ar…

If you know anyone still involved over there you should let them know about the Kiwix project!

>Kiwix is an offline reader for online content like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, or TED Talks. It makes knowledge available to people with no or limited internet access. The software as well as the content is free to use for anyone.

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

#72

Post by 867-5309 »

kmarc wrote: post #69
867-5309 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in this instance a simple vpn or proxy should suffice. they could get by on free subscriptions for textual content

> vpn > proxy These are solutions for ME and YOU when we are there as tourists (if we really want to chop off that $10 from our travel budget). Probably not a solution for people who have never heard of websites like Wikipedia.

if you are introducing them to a new website, they will have to remember the address, or create a shortcut/homepage

vpns have "set and forget" autoconnect functionality

it's quite common practice for the more liberal East. how do you think they access the wider internet otherwise?

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

#73

Post by Snowworm »

867-5309 wrote: post #67
kmarc wrote: post #66

Cool pet project, admirable engineering etc. My comment is about something else: net neutrality, as someone already mentioned. I was teaching English in Laos for school kids. I was amazed that some of their families struggle with providing (nutritious enough) food for their children, yet, everyone had smartphones with always-on 4G,even in the countryside - however, no WiFi almost anywhere. The brains of these kids ar…

in this instance a simple vpn or proxy should suffice. they could get by on free subscriptions for textual content

If they whitelisted only social media rather than blacklisting websites, I highly doubt a VPN or proxy would work unless it was provided by Google, Facebook or Tiktok.

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

#74

Post by KolenCh »

867-5309 wrote: post #72
kmarc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vpn > proxy These are solutions for ME and YOU when we are there as tourists (if we really want to chop off that $10 from our travel budget). Probably not a solution for people who have never heard of websites like Wikipedia.

if you are introducing them to a new website, they will have to remember the address, or create a shortcut/homepage vpns have "set and forget" autoconnect functionality it's quite common practice for the more liberal East. how do you think they access the wider internet otherwise?

They are talking about people in Laos, and the sponsored $10 subscription is considered to be a significant portion of their spending already.

Why are you then comparing to rich people in China where VPN is commodity?

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

#75

Post by 867-5309 »

KolenCh wrote: post #74
867-5309 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are introducing them to a new website, they will have to remember the address, or create a shortcut/homepage vpns have "set and forget" autoconnect functionality it's quite common practice for the more liberal East. how do you think they access the wider internet otherwise?

They are talking about people in Laos, and the sponsored $10 subscription is considered to be a significant portion of their spending already. Why are you then comparing to rich people in China where VPN is commodity?

>they could get by on free subscriptions

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

#76

Post by andrewxdiamond »

867-5309 wrote: post #67
kmarc wrote: post #66

Cool pet project, admirable engineering etc. My comment is about something else: net neutrality, as someone already mentioned. I was teaching English in Laos for school kids. I was amazed that some of their families struggle with providing (nutritious enough) food for their children, yet, everyone had smartphones with always-on 4G,even in the countryside - however, no WiFi almost anywhere. The brains of these kids ar…

in this instance a simple vpn or proxy should suffice. they could get by on free subscriptions for textual content

How would a VPN work if there is an allowlist of domains? The VPN traffic would get blocked, no?

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

#77

Post by yorwba »

867-5309 wrote: post #75
KolenCh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are talking about people in Laos, and the sponsored $10 subscription is considered to be a significant portion of their spending already. Why are you then comparing to rich people in China where VPN is commodity?

>they could get by on free subscriptions

> all these kids had were Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and TikTok, everything else costs ~10$

I don't think any of those four products includes free VPN. You'd need to tunnel Wikipedia through WhatsApp instead, or something.

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

#78

Post by 867-5309 »

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #76
867-5309 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in this instance a simple vpn or proxy should suffice. they could get by on free subscriptions for textual content

How would a VPN work if there is an allowlist of domains? The VPN traffic would get blocked, no?

they operate at a lower OSI level and use various obfuscation techniques

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

#79

Post by can16358p »

Would this be extended to tunnel an SSH session over WhatsApp?

While obviously not super convenient, it'd be interesting to type commands and get results.

Of course any interactive terminal wouldn't work, but for simple commands, executing scripts and seeing logs etc. this should work.

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

#80

Post by vgb2k18 »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #33
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…

Back in 2019 when Indian government put a city of 8 million into a 9 month curfew including internet blackout, I was anxious yo get online. Then they permitted only dozen of "white listed websites", just ones that did not allow anti India propaganda. Anyways, I found amazon India worked. I went to aws, set up a vps and simply used ssh tunnel to it. It worked, for a bit. They closed the default port and I could not sp…

>Used foxyproxy btw

HAProxy is also really useful for this purpose, I dare say more-so. For my use-case it solved this problem: "Using 1 port on the remote server (port 443), how can I serve HTTPS (serve a website) and SSH or SOCKS5 (use the server as a proxy)?". HAProxy was good for the task. It could be used to tunnel SSH through HTTPS too, in the case where a corp firewall is using DPI to block standard SSH. What I'm not sure of though... can it tunnel SSH through HTTPS, and, serve a website at the same time? That's a question for the reader.

The idea of serving a website at the same time was for the purpose of providing a plausible reason for traffic exists from that server. Like, you know, if the admin's see traffic on 443 from an ip/domain with no website, that's got to be a magnitude of suspicion higher than an ip/domain with an actual website being served on it.

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