Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 261 posts

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

#241

Post by throwaway2202 »

wishfish wrote: post #191
jimbob45 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran is geographically two countries away from Israel, the country that clandestinely fomented similar riots/insurrections in 10+ other countries that border Israel during the Arab Spring. Furthermore, Israel has been greatly outspoken in its hatred of Iran and Iran's nuclear program, going so far as to deploy the most sophisticated cyberattack in history[1]. It would hardly be a conspiracy theory to pin this on Isra…

How many major protests have happened in Iran over the past ten years? That's actually a serious question. I remember big ones in 2019. Smaller ones since in the time before the current uprising. Some before 2019 as well. There's tremendous anger beneath the surface in Iran and it's not caused by Mossad. Iran banned abortion in 1979. There's been a baby boom since. The country is lopsided towards young people. People…

At mild risk of getting downvoted.

At least in the last 10 years, the protests has been motivated by economic situation. people don’t like the government but they also remember how bad the last revolution was, iraq-iran war after it on top.

Iran’s banning of abortion matters far less than gov successfully promoting lower number of children through the 90s. Matters far less because numbers, easy to verify.

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

#242

Post by plantain »

shadowgovt wrote: post #76
plantain wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google got hacked by inside actors planted in their physical offices by the Chinese government. This just isn't true? It was an IE 0-day.

That was one of the tools used. The attackers got access to the Gmail backing store.

That's the tool they used to get in, then they went sideways from the corporate network and eventually into Gmail. I was on the team that cleaned it up...

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

#243

Post by aljgz »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #190
aljgz wrote: post #124

Iranian software engineer here, AMA

On one hand I don't want to ruin this thread with what is a common topic of disagreement; at the same time your kind offer provides a unique opportunity. There is a fairly, if not pervasive let's call it vocal technical sentiment that blockchain and related crypto technologies, in some form, are government/oppression-proof; that it provides financial and communication paths and channels that are so firm they withstan…

> many people are underestimating just how totalitarian and ruthless a government CAN get

Well said. I read your comment and I know immediately that it comes from first hand experience :(

I'm not aware of any technological solution to censorship by a government that's persistent enough and has firm control on everything. Unfortunately, there is also no way to overthrow a government that's ready to kill citizens, not without foreign aid.

Iranian government has the ability to inspect all packages. Of course the contents of the ones that are encrypted cannot be read, but they can do lots of analyses based on everything else and aggressively block anything they don't trust. When they are at this level, no network technology can have a large impact, because if it does, they just shut down everything like they did before.

Technologies like Starlink are harder to control, but the equipment has to be imported and doing that in scale with all the control they have is not feasible.

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

#244

Post by aljgz »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #204
snovv_crash wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's then the point? It eventually makes things hard enough for the normal people that they revolt and (hopefully) replace the government.

That may be the intention, but that's not the reality of sanctioned countries. Iran, North Korea, Cuba et al are still rolling with their old rich leaders in pleasure, but an agonizing populace. It's really sad-- some countries are just unlucky :(

We can argue that it's not even the intention. If a government shoots civilians, there is little hope to overthrow them by riots alone. Things can change if police, army and riot police start to disobey order. Also when there is foreign aid to arm people.

FWIW, I believe that sanctions serve to

1- Limit the reach of a regime's activity overseas. Iran's government was supporting several militant groups in the middle-east. Sanctions also had a huge effect on the country's nuclear program.

2- Force them to negotiate. That actually worked with Iran (but Trump reversed it)

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

#245

Post by shadowgovt »

plantain wrote: post #242
shadowgovt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was one of the tools used. The attackers got access to the Gmail backing store.

That's the tool they used to get in, then they went sideways from the corporate network and eventually into Gmail. I was on the team that cleaned it up...

Correct. The issue was that at the time, simple access to the intranet allowed for such turboing of credentials.

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

#246

Post by throwaway83734 »

anvic wrote: post #26
bpodgursky wrote: post #11

Google pulling out of China instead of catering to censorship was a principled move, but fairly obviously did not lead to more freedom of speech in China. It helped kickstart a domestic, government-obedient tech industry. I don't know what the right move here is. Nobody who thinks there's an obvious right answer is worth listening to.

The right move is letting countries govern themselves in whatever way they see fit and leaving them alone. Or would you like to have Iran or Pakistan or whatever intervening in the domestic issues of the West?

No post body was provided.

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

#247

Post by marcosdumay »

tptacek wrote: post #229
marcosdumay wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, this is something I shouldn't have to say. But getting a DNS response with a flag saying "yep, trust me, it's valid" is not DNSSEC. What is it with DNSSEC that people have to pollute discussions saying that stupid stuff that isn't DNSSEC isn't secure?

It's an interesting flavor of "No True Scotsman" when you've managed to argue that every resolver on every OS in the world is "stupid stuff that isn't DNSSEC". If DNSSEC only works if you're using a custom fully-recursing resolver, not present on any mainstream operating system or built into a single piece of software you install on your machine, what exactly is the point of signing a zone? So far as you're concerned…

DNSSEC has a very clear specification a few widespread implementations. What you are talking about fit to those?

Are you really making FUD about it, by claiming unrelated logical fallacies in a non-boolean discussion? How does a "no true Scotsman" even applies to something that has a published standard?

I know you don't like it, yet, I have never seen any proposal that brings you the assurances DNSSEC brings. AFAIK, your favorites all wither solve different problems (relevant problems, yes, but not the same) or have strictly lower assurances (AKA, they are subject to the exact same flaws, and are either worse or not better of for each one of them).

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

#248

Post by Melatonic »

tptacek wrote: post #230
Melatonic wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the ISP or government just blocks all the popular DNS servers by IP.....

That's pretty tough to do, since any IP can run a DoH cache.

True but in practice developers are not that creative (yet) and there are even people who are regularly creating and updating lists with all of these IPs. I manually entered them but you can also run a firewall on your mobile devices (android) as well and combined with a opnsense / pfsense at home you are pretty much set. There may come a day when a provider starts to generate tons of different DoH providers on the fly but I do not think we have seen that yet.

Probably I should figure out a way to have my pfsense box though dynamically generate the blocked IP's based on one of these dynamically updated lists...

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

#249

Post by throwaway2202 »

throwaway2202 wrote: post #241
wishfish wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many major protests have happened in Iran over the past ten years? That's actually a serious question. I remember big ones in 2019. Smaller ones since in the time before the current uprising. Some before 2019 as well. There's tremendous anger beneath the surface in Iran and it's not caused by Mossad. Iran banned abortion in 1979. There's been a baby boom since. The country is lopsided towards young people. People…

At mild risk of getting downvoted. At least in the last 10 years, the protests has been motivated by economic situation. people don’t like the government but they also remember how bad the last revolution was, iraq-iran war after it on top. Iran’s banning of abortion matters far less than gov successfully promoting lower number of children through the 90s. Matters far less because numbers, easy to verify.

To add the economic situation is consequence of trump pulling out of the nuclear agreement, sanctioning, and democratic administration keeping the status quo.

@dang my other comment is dead. Flagged or not according to guidelines?

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

#250

Post by michaelwww »

Melatonic wrote: post #233
michaelwww wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking more like sneaker net - passing thumb drives of photos and videos around

Or point to point connections using simple "WokFi" setups. Maybe you live in Iran and just happen to REALLY like cooking Chinese food? And so do ALL your friends :-D

You weren't joking!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WokFi

Post reply on HN