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Tell HN: Russia has started blocking OpenVPN/WireGuard connections

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Re: Tell HN: Russia has started blocking OpenVPN/WireGuard connections

#41

Post by 8organicbits »

someotherperson wrote: post #16

Unfortunately, thanks to the Great Firewall of China, there has been a lot of resources put in to fingerprint VPNs and block them by state actors. Fortunately, however, there is equally years of some of the smartest minds on the planet working to bypass Chinese censorship, so there are some great OpenVPN alternatives. I really encourage you to look into something like Shadowsocks which Chinese people have found great…

What's the current legal risk of using a VPN in China or Russia these days? I found a couple articles about people getting charged, but none I know to be reputable or particularly well written.

Re: Tell HN: Russia has started blocking OpenVPN/WireGuard connections

#43

Post by seanmcdirmid »

8organicbits wrote: post #41
someotherperson wrote: post #16

Unfortunately, thanks to the Great Firewall of China, there has been a lot of resources put in to fingerprint VPNs and block them by state actors. Fortunately, however, there is equally years of some of the smartest minds on the planet working to bypass Chinese censorship, so there are some great OpenVPN alternatives. I really encourage you to look into something like Shadowsocks which Chinese people have found great…

What's the current legal risk of using a VPN in China or Russia these days? I found a couple articles about people getting charged, but none I know to be reputable or particularly well written.

China at least, isn’t a strong rule of law country, rather it is more of a rule by law one. So if they want to get you, they’ll find some law to get you on, and if they don’t, they won’t go after you for using a VPN or other minor offenses. So I wouldn’t really worry about it.

Re: Tell HN: Russia has started blocking OpenVPN/WireGuard connections

#44

Post by apfsx »

yellow_lead wrote: post #28
someotherperson wrote: post #16

Unfortunately, thanks to the Great Firewall of China, there has been a lot of resources put in to fingerprint VPNs and block them by state actors. Fortunately, however, there is equally years of some of the smartest minds on the planet working to bypass Chinese censorship, so there are some great OpenVPN alternatives. I really encourage you to look into something like Shadowsocks which Chinese people have found great…

Can anyone confirm Shadowsocks works anymore? When I tried to use it a few years ago, it got blocked in a few days. To be honest, I think they are blocking anything that exchanges a lot of data with oversesas IPs, after hitting a certain threshold.

Shadowsocks and ShadowsocksR don’t work anymore in my experience in China or Iran. V2ray does which is the successor to those.

Re: Tell HN: Russia has started blocking OpenVPN/WireGuard connections

#46

Post by [deleted] »

vbezhenar wrote: post #29

Working around DPI blocks is possible as long as you can get your hands on foreign VPS. Just invent your own protocol and use it for yourself. Wrap it with HTTPS or even HTTP, nobody's has resources to analyse every single website protocol. However some huge ingress/egress traffic to unknown website with few random pages looks very suspiciously. So it's possible to select those websites using statistics analysis. Now…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Russia has started blocking OpenVPN/WireGuard connections

#48

Post by wiseowise »

dang wrote: post #153
throwbas wrote: post #15

I have the fortune to reside in Russia-controlled Donbas. Over here they have been blocking all WireGuard connections for a long time. OpenVPN seems to be blocked selectively depending on the host. The government and commerce must need it more than WireGuard. It isn't consistent. Different ISPs block different hosts and protocols at different times. I assume we are a kind of test and staging environment for censorshi…

[stub for offtopicness]

> I have the fortune to reside in Russia-controlled Donbas.

My condolences. Hope Ukraine and allies can can sustain enough pressure to free those lands.

Re: Tell HN: Russia has started blocking OpenVPN/WireGuard connections

#49

Post by bananapub »

> The prospect of an isolated Russian interweb has become oh so real.

none of the comments below have picked up on this specific thing but Russia has done exercises on exactly this topic. they seem much more prepared to do it / want to appear to be willing to do it than any other large country that isn't already a police state.

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