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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

#211

Post by physicles »

cracrecry wrote: post #176
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…

They called the Chinese to help with their experience like 6 months after the start of the war as they realised some young people could access news outside the official channels. They have been testing it since then. In China once their AI systems or whatever decides that you are using a VPN you will be punished by increasingly blocking your Internet for more and more time.

> In China once their AI systems or whatever decides that you are using a VPN you will be punished by increasingly blocking your Internet for more and more time.

This isn’t true. VPN use is widespread here, but I’ve never heard of anyone’s internet getting wholesale blocked because of it.

Selling VPN services, however, is a big no-no.

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

#212

Post by ytch »

jvanderbot wrote: post #60
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…

How, technically, can they block wire guard? It can operate as pure UDP on any port. Are we referring to wireguard vendors like tailscale here?

China uses statistics, entropy of packets and other DPI-like methods[1],

also HN discussions of it[2]:

[1] https://gfw.report/publications/usenixsecurity23/en/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36531485

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

#213

Post by Georgelemental »

Const-me wrote: post #160
Georgelemental wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure a collapse of Russia would be good for GP. Living under an oppressive regime is not fun, but Putin's Russia isn't that bad as dictatorships go, and anarchy/societal collapse aren't fun either.

GP won’t suffer from anarchy or societal collapse. According to internationally recognized state borders, they live in Ukraine, not in Russia. Russians have lost approximately half of the land they have occupied in the first 3 months of the full-scale war. We have repeatedly observed that Ukrainian government is willing and capable of bringing law and order to these liberated territories.

I know someone who has spent a lot of time working in Ukraine, and has acquaintances there they keep in touch with. Their description of the situation is not nearly as rosy as yours. The war (which, for the Donbass, started in 2014) has devastated an immense amount of territory. Ukraine had Europe's lowest fertility rate even before the war, and now millions of working-age men are dead, wounded our have left the country, which makes prospects of a quick recovery slim. Also, Ukraine's government is extremely corrupt, and while less autocratic than Russia it is very far from a model democracy (was even before the war, and war tends to make countries more corrupt and authoritarian). The best thing for GP to hope for would likely be peace, as soon as possible, and which side of the armistice line they fall on won't make much difference for them.

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

#214

Post by Const-me »

Georgelemental wrote: post #213
Const-me wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP won’t suffer from anarchy or societal collapse. According to internationally recognized state borders, they live in Ukraine, not in Russia. Russians have lost approximately half of the land they have occupied in the first 3 months of the full-scale war. We have repeatedly observed that Ukrainian government is willing and capable of bringing law and order to these liberated territories.

I know someone who has spent a lot of time working in Ukraine, and has acquaintances there they keep in touch with. Their description of the situation is not nearly as rosy as yours. The war (which, for the Donbass, started in 2014) has devastated an immense amount of territory. Ukraine had Europe's lowest fertility rate even before the war, and now millions of working-age men are dead, wounded our have left the coun…

> not nearly as rosy as yours

Ukraine is at war, nothing rosy about that.

Still, living conditions of people north of Kyiv, north of Kharkiv, or in Kherson is dramatically better than GP’s situation. Note GP can’t even freely talk to English-speaking strangers here on HN because they fear the consequences from the Russian invaders who call themselves “government”.

GP has very good reasons for that fear. Russians are doing horrible things to Ukrainians on the occupied territories, for example https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/torture-chambers-ukrain...

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

#215

Post by Georgelemental »

Const-me wrote: post #214
Georgelemental wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone who has spent a lot of time working in Ukraine, and has acquaintances there they keep in touch with. Their description of the situation is not nearly as rosy as yours. The war (which, for the Donbass, started in 2014) has devastated an immense amount of territory. Ukraine had Europe's lowest fertility rate even before the war, and now millions of working-age men are dead, wounded our have left the coun…

> not nearly as rosy as yours Ukraine is at war, nothing rosy about that. Still, living conditions of people north of Kyiv, north of Kharkiv, or in Kherson is dramatically better than GP’s situation. Note GP can’t even freely talk to English-speaking strangers here on HN because they fear the consequences from the Russian invaders who call themselves “government”. GP has very good reasons for that fear. Russians are…

> Still, living conditions of people north of Kyiv, north of Kharkiv, or in Kherson is dramatically better than GP’s situation.

They are also dramatically better in Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Vladivostok. Of course being far from the front lines is better than being near them.

> GP can’t even freely talk to English-speaking stranger

People in Ukrainian-controlled territory can't talk freely either, there have been many cases of extrajudicial arrests and even killings of dissidents by Ukrainian government authorities. For example, peruse Gonzalo Lira's list (Lira himself died a week ago in Ukrainian custody): https://twitter.com/GonzaloLira1968/status/15174577687976796...

---

This is a war between two thuggish regimes. One thug might be a bit more brutal than the other, but the war itself is what's doing the most harm to ordinary people.

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

#216

Post by Const-me »

Georgelemental wrote: post #215
Const-me wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not nearly as rosy as yours Ukraine is at war, nothing rosy about that. Still, living conditions of people north of Kyiv, north of Kharkiv, or in Kherson is dramatically better than GP’s situation. Note GP can’t even freely talk to English-speaking strangers here on HN because they fear the consequences from the Russian invaders who call themselves “government”. GP has very good reasons for that fear. Russians are…

> Still, living conditions of people north of Kyiv, north of Kharkiv, or in Kherson is dramatically better than GP’s situation. They are also dramatically better in Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Vladivostok. Of course being far from the front lines is better than being near them. > GP can’t even freely talk to English-speaking stranger People in Ukrainian-controlled territory can't talk freely either, there have been ma…

> being far from the front lines is better than being near them

Kherson is less than 5 km from the active war zone. Northern parts of Kharkiv oblast have a Russian border nearby, with Russian recon groups routinely trying to infiltrate.

> can't talk freely either

I have several friends currently in Ukraine. None of them is scared of expressing their political views, neither IRL nor on the internets. None of them supports Russia for obvious reasons, but not all of them are huge fans of their current government.

> extrajudicial arrests and even killings

Wikipedia has an interesting article about the guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Lira The article says the arrest was lawful, Ukrainians released him on house arrest, he tried to flee the country, then he was arrested for real and died of pneumonia in custody.

Every death is a tragedy, but I don’t believe Ukrainian government deliberately killed that person. Why would they fake pneumonia during the war, at the time when random civilians are routinely killed by Russian missiles and drones across the whole country?

> This is a war between two thuggish regimes

This is Ukraine’s war of independence. Ukrainians have lost the last time in 1917-1922. This time, things will be different.

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

#217

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#218

Post by gh02t »

EasyMark wrote: post #200
kgeist wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on what sites you want to visit using VPN. People here in Russia openly use VPN to visit Instagram etc., and no one seems to have an issue with that. But if you want to read some opposition sites, however... Now that's some gray area.

If the VPN is working then they wouldn't know if you're going to instagram or fuckrussianoppression.org tho

That ambiguity is beneficial, they can simply say you did whatever they want to say with the VPN usage as a pretext.

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

#219

Post by azkwxm »

Hello, this project can help you solve some problems, but the problems you have are far more complicated than we imagined, so there may not be a good solution for you.

https://github.com/Useful-open-source-project/Share-vpn-buil...

  OpenVPN/WireGuard, a protocol similar to VPN, has been identified. What we use now is a proxy protocol. It is not probabilistically recognized by VPN protocol operators or firewalls. After all, they can also enter AI to help them improve their firewalls, so we  We also have to find ways to resist or improve our agency agreement so that he is no longer afraid of the firewall.

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

#220

Post by LudwigNagasena »

libertine wrote: post #188
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Stalin have to do with that? As far as I know, fascism is everywhere on the march. And it’s Trump who sets the pace, not Stalin. ( https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/20/fascis... ) Also, it was Trudeau who froze protesters' banks accounts, not Stalin. It was Boris Johnson who partied during Covid lockdowns, not Stalin. It was Pedro Sánchez whose implementation of a state of alarm was deemed…

Ah, I thought you were speaking from a Historical perspective, not very recent events. I will not dismiss some failures of character of some Western leaders, and questionable moments in modern democracies... but answering your question: in comparison to modern Russia, yes, those anecdotes are laughable. None of the Western leaders has murdered or attempted to murder political opposition through several methods of ass…

Again, laughable. You don’t need to compare the West to anything to see draconian overtones. (Well, only if literally, to Draco.)
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