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Russia Starts Blocking VPN Protocols

vpncentral.com

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Re: Russia Starts Blocking VPN Protocols

#11

Post by tokai »

K5EiS wrote: post #7
0xDEF wrote: post #2

Most VPN services are already blocked in Russia by both mobile and landline providers. Many also block Tor. However now it seems like Russian mobile providers are blocking not just VPN services but even the underlying VPN protocols (WireGuard, OpenVPN). Interestingly Telegram is still not blocked in Russia.

Probably because the Russian army uses Telegram. Even their MoD has a channel posting updates and propaganda

It has been wild to see Russians soldiers request air/artillery support over Telegram.

Re: Russia Starts Blocking VPN Protocols

#12

Post by dgellow »

drbig wrote: post #5
0xDEF wrote: post #2

Most VPN services are already blocked in Russia by both mobile and landline providers. Many also block Tor. However now it seems like Russian mobile providers are blocking not just VPN services but even the underlying VPN protocols (WireGuard, OpenVPN). Interestingly Telegram is still not blocked in Russia.

> Interestingly Telegram is still not blocked in Russia. Could that be taken as a sign that it is not blocked _for a reason_, or is it already too much tinfoil on the head?

For reasons, yes, but not the nefarious ones you seem to imply. They tried multiple times in the past and created lot of problems for other services as a side effect. Also, a large portion of the Russian population and military use telegram for communication.

Re: Russia Starts Blocking VPN Protocols

#13

Post by nabogh »

I'm a little confused what Russia has to gain from this. My impression was previously that Russia was somewhat of a wild west when it came to piracy and internet restrictions.

To make things weirder, the article claims that only mobile networks are affected. I wonder why that is. Is this just the decisions of a handful of telcos and it's being reported as a state-imposed restriction?

Edit: also in my opinion, "blocking at the protocol level" is a bit misleading since they can't actually see the packet contents. Wireguard for example is just UDP packets. They have to infer from other patterns that the traffic is Wireguard and drop packets that meet those criteria.

Re: Russia Starts Blocking VPN Protocols

#14

Post by gsa »

I have been researching VPN protocols that work in China and found that Xray [0] is the most recommended route to escape the GFW. An ideal VPN setup is one where packets appear as normal https traffic. Some VPN setups take it a step further and proxy the traffic through Cloudflare. Setting all this up is nowhere as easy as Wireguard. Coincidentally, I came across this project on Github earlier today which is an obfuscation proxy for Wireguard [1], but I haven't found any information about how well it works.

[0] https://github.com/XTLS/Xray-core

[1] https://github.com/database64128/swgp-go

Re: Russia Starts Blocking VPN Protocols

#15

Post by inrussianow »

nabogh wrote: post #13

I'm a little confused what Russia has to gain from this. My impression was previously that Russia was somewhat of a wild west when it came to piracy and internet restrictions. To make things weirder, the article claims that only mobile networks are affected. I wonder why that is. Is this just the decisions of a handful of telcos and it's being reported as a state-imposed restriction? Edit: also in my opinion, "blocki…

Im in Russia now posting this over on a wireguard vpn, using a landline ISP. So far no problems, havent tried on mobile.

Re: Russia Starts Blocking VPN Protocols

#16

Post by zikduruqe »

inrussianow wrote: post #15
nabogh wrote: post #13

I'm a little confused what Russia has to gain from this. My impression was previously that Russia was somewhat of a wild west when it came to piracy and internet restrictions. To make things weirder, the article claims that only mobile networks are affected. I wonder why that is. Is this just the decisions of a handful of telcos and it's being reported as a state-imposed restriction? Edit: also in my opinion, "blocki…

Im in Russia now posting this over on a wireguard vpn, using a landline ISP. So far no problems, havent tried on mobile.

Are you using port 51820 or a different port for your Wireguard endpoint? Just curious as I have read where others have used different ports to circumvent DPI.

Re: Russia Starts Blocking VPN Protocols

#18

Post by 0xDEF »

gsa wrote: post #14

I have been researching VPN protocols that work in China and found that Xray [0] is the most recommended route to escape the GFW. An ideal VPN setup is one where packets appear as normal https traffic. Some VPN setups take it a step further and proxy the traffic through Cloudflare. Setting all this up is nowhere as easy as Wireguard. Coincidentally, I came across this project on Github earlier today which is an obfus…

I have noticed many new security and privacy oriented projects use Go and even C/C++.

Wasn't Rust supposed to be the language that should be used to write all security-critical software? What happened? Are crates like rustls/ring still intentionally sabotaging Rust's cryptographic ecosystem with their "we will always be pre-1.0.0 and never have a stable API" philosophy?

Re: Russia Starts Blocking VPN Protocols

#20

Post by DarkNova6 »

nabogh wrote: post #13

I'm a little confused what Russia has to gain from this. My impression was previously that Russia was somewhat of a wild west when it came to piracy and internet restrictions. To make things weirder, the article claims that only mobile networks are affected. I wonder why that is. Is this just the decisions of a handful of telcos and it's being reported as a state-imposed restriction? Edit: also in my opinion, "blocki…

> I'm a little confused what Russia has to gain from this. My impression was previously that Russia was somewhat of a wild west when it came to piracy and internet restrictions.

Is it not obvious? Russia has long blocked many apps associated with the west, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. and promotes the use of russian-only webspace. Because the people are not stupid, many evaded this act of censorship with VPNs. It was a surprise VPN were permitted for such a long time as it is.

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