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As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

reuters.com

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Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#101

Post by WHATDOESIT »

hef19898 wrote: post #93
WHATDOESIT wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now there's practically a revolution because they don't want to wear a piece of fabric on heads. I don't think they could.

You do realize that these topics arw differwnt? Also a nice stab at supressed women standing up for their rights in very repressive country, doing so takes a lot of courage. Don't diminish that.

I didn't diminish a thing. If anything, it was a stab at the dumb religion the damned government is basing it on. I lived through communism in Europe and was present during the local revolution, I know very well how much courage is required, I was staring inside the gun of a Russian tank there. And no I don't think these topics are too different - everybody knows unfree people need secure communication first and foremost, it's only your take that the iPhone is merely a fashion accessory, but in practice it's also the most secure phone on the market and now it's getting sattelite comms too.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#102

Post by wyldfire »

n-i-m-a wrote: post #44

I'm an Iranian living in Italy and have an Italian phone/WhatsApp number. Couldn't call anyone or receive WhatsApp calls to/from Iranian and non-Iranian numbers yesterday afternoon when the internet blocking started in Iran. It was like all numbers somehow in touch with Iranian contacts were blocked from completing calls. As soon as either side of the call would answer, the call would end with a message like you are…

I have friends here in the US who use WhatsApp and they are originally from Iran. I wonder, if it's been many years since they lived in Iran if they're still considered "Iranian" for the purposes of this blockage?

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#103

Post by XorNot »

LinuxBender wrote: post #99
martinald wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine SNI too - which is in cleartext. There is encrypted SNI but I don't know how far that is along in terms of deployment. But really for a company like FB you could just blackhole their entire IP range(s) and/or AS (AS32934?) which would take everything offline very quickly.

Cloudflare supports ESNI. AFAIK none of the mainstream browsers support ESNI by default. I believe the latest build of Firefox [1] may have an option in about:config to enable it. One could check if a website supports ESNI with [2] ESNICheck. Support for ESNI is still subject to change. [3] [1] - https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypt-that-sni-firefox-edition... [2] - https://esnicheck.com/ [3] - https://serverfault.com…

ESNI is useless. Nobody cares that it's secret - they care that they don't know what you're doing.

It removes plausible deniability, which means no more domain fronting bypasses.

It's not enough to be "secure", you need to be able to hide in plain sight.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#104

Post by aasasd »

londons_explore wrote: post #63
lupire wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it possible for two non-Iranians (in a geographic/telecom sense, not ethnic sense) to lose the connection on WhatsApp due to Iranian government? Surely the blocklist isn't implemented inside Facebook, it must be based on cellphone carrier. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937782 links to claims that the Iranian government hacked WhatsApp or one of its networking providers.

Normally the government (in this case Iran) contacts the service provider (in this case FB/Whatsapp)and lets them know that unless they self-block their service, the government will do blocking at the network level and might issue fines. Normally, that makes the service provider implement blocks on their end, because then at least they can present the user with a sensible error message, and other services that the go…

To my knowledge, Iranian government doesn't have power to dictate FB's actions outside Iran. So FB could block by the IPs, but blocking everywhere by the nationality makes no sense (at least by the standards of a normal person).

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#105

Post by LinuxBender »

michaelwww wrote: post #3

I'd be surprised if by now Iranians hadn't figured out alternate means of communication.

Can people in Iran SSH out to other countries? If so the folks familiar with SSH could use something like sshchat or devzat [1] see demo info, not my project This does not persist chat, but that may be a net positive in a surveillance state.

    ssh-keygen -q -t rsa -b 2048 -N "" -C "devzat" -f ~/.ssh/.id_devzat
    ssh -i ~/.ssh/.id_devzat some-name@devzat.hackclub.com
If DNS is blocked then edit ~/.ssh/config and append:

    Host devzat devzat.hackclub.com
    Hostname 150.136.142.44
    Port 22
        # Port 443
    User some_name
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/.id_devzat
    LogLevel VERBOSE
[1] - https://github.com/quackduck/devzat

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#106

Post by criley2 »

surfpel wrote: post #56
criley2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather the American people elect a government that will protect their rights through laws. Meta will not violate American law. As citizens, our most effective tool is our government of the people. The idea that we rely on culture or corporate benevolence to maintain our freedoms, and not our representatives and laws... it's insane, to the say the least. I'd prefer to elect the people to protect my freedoms, n…

You've given platitudes with an overall misunderstanding of both the parent comment as well as a the functioning of the real world. > I would rather the American people elect a government that will protect their rights through laws. I would also like a world where problems don't exist, but that doesn't change the real world. It's a naive take. The world is complicated. > Meta will not violate American law. This is bo…

What an absurd, condescending and pointless reply.

Example:

>> I would rather the American people elect a government that will protect their rights through laws.

>I would also like a world where problems don't exist, but that doesn't change the real world. It's a naive take. The world is complicated.

What in the hell kind of reply is this? How dare you. (On the day that the EU fined Google 4 billion Euros, largest in history, demonstrating laws and governments of people, no less). Your nonsensically dismissive reply is immature and entirely unfit for this community. Take this tripe back to reddit.

Shame on you for how you behaved here.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#107

Post by nashashmi »

nashashmi wrote: post #8

Didn't Obama give social media special status to serve in sanctioned countries

This was about a previous title where it was saying facebook whatsapp instagram refusing access to Iranians even outside the country.

The title is corrected now.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#109

Post by stickfigure »

londons_explore wrote: post #63
lupire wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it possible for two non-Iranians (in a geographic/telecom sense, not ethnic sense) to lose the connection on WhatsApp due to Iranian government? Surely the blocklist isn't implemented inside Facebook, it must be based on cellphone carrier. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937782 links to claims that the Iranian government hacked WhatsApp or one of its networking providers.

Normally the government (in this case Iran) contacts the service provider (in this case FB/Whatsapp)and lets them know that unless they self-block their service, the government will do blocking at the network level and might issue fines. Normally, that makes the service provider implement blocks on their end, because then at least they can present the user with a sensible error message, and other services that the go…

There is zero chance that FB/Meta is complicit in this. The occam's razor answer is that the Iranian government has figured out an attack, and a bunch of FB employees are frantically trying to mitigate it instead of reading HN.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#110

Post by zmgsabst »

surfpel wrote: post #72
ideamotor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important point. To reiterate, the culture of companies change.

Culture in general changes. A company is not an island. Employees move around, tech moves around. Society at large gets comfortable with censorship when its use spreads. We're all looking for ways to censor spammers or belligerents from internet forums. It could easily start there and spread to other areas.

That already happened, eg, COVID policies on social media and YouTube.

We had a breakdown in our consensus mechanism — because the government partnered with corporations to censor rather than allow public debate.

The nation is still bitterly divided.

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