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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

#221

Post by Georgelemental »

Const-me wrote: post #216
Georgelemental wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 supp…

> the arrest was lawful

He was arrested for political speech, which is ipso facto an unjust violation of his fundamental human rights and of natural law. Putin's Russia also has "laws" that justify the arrest of dissidents, doesn't make it OK. (And many of the other people on Lira's list were simply summarily executed, without any trial or other legal process)

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

#222

Post by asdffdasasdf »

circularfoyers wrote: post #33
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…

Outline ( https://getoutline.org ) is even easier to deploy than Streisand in my experience and uses Shadowsocks.

all those things are useless.

if you have contact out of the country you're already part of a very small elite. if not, you cannot use this. they are so oblivious to the demography they claim to help that the site requires js, a big no if you want to be seen by really f** people having to use tor browser.

all this does is placate some small elite. it helps china/Russia more than anything else.

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

#223

Post by asdffdasasdf »

cracrecry wrote: post #171
d0mine wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any other types of countries? Note: you don't need to put something into law to silence someone. If necessary anyone can be canceled. Everybody is "guilty" but select few are prosecuted. Therefore the real power belongs to those who decides what issues can be ignored.

Yes, they are. There is a world of difference. In the West you normal people have so much power they do not even realise. You see that when you live outside it. In the West there is a long History of institutions(like cities) that went against the abuses of the people in charge. You were a servant, you entered a city(burg) you became free, the city protected you. This happened for centuries. In China something like t…

you were also a privilege person in the West and oblivious to poorer people outside of larger cities as the people you saw in China being oblivious to poorer people living outside of larger cities. foreigners, no matter how privileged, hardly can live inside the safety bubbles you yourself lived in the west.

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

#224

Post by asdffdasasdf »

MrDisposable wrote: post #107

Russian here, living in Russia. My paid VPN provider stopped working months ago. Then my self-hosted Outline server stopped working. Then my self-hosted OpenVPN stopped working too. Both were hosten on Digital Ocean (Frankfurt). What currently works for me is self-hosted Outline running on an US server, but I suspect that won't last long. Looks like I have no choice but to learn how to self-host XRay. A smart friend…

you're probably getting spoted by using a single server every time. protocol doesn't matter

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

#225

Post by asdffdasasdf »

monday_ wrote: post #95

Typing this from Moscow, over OpenVPN. I have been around the country over the last year and am yet to experience protocol-level blocks (although there are credible reports this happened, just not in my experience). It seems like the current wave is about blocking popular providers. Folks with own server, like myself, are not a target so far. I'd expect the government to cool down expansive internet censorship until…

their heuristics is probably looking for long time connections.. you're scaping by moving the client around

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

#226

Post by asdffdasasdf »

cedws wrote: post #109

It's worth mentioning that the Russian government has a plan to completely detach the country from the wider Internet. This system has already been tested and is available at the flick of a switch. Unfortunately, it's probably a matter of time until this system is activated for real and the Iron Curtain drops to the floor. Then Putin will find some way to blame the West and rally against us.

of course it's possible. any country can do this. all trunk connecting are owned by the government telecom branch on 99pct of the world.

but then Russia would have a hard time making their hacking. lol.

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

#227

Post by b112 »

EasyMark wrote: post #199
b112 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many of these services are just state actors, who can then track people more directly.

If I was in Russia I would be a lot less afraid of USA/Britain/Germany MITM than I would of Putin's agents catching wind of the free flow of information and coming for me and my family and throwing us off the roof or putting polonium in our water supply.

Interesting. I said 'state actor' not 'western actor'.

The state, any state, often employs such tactics to make people believe they are protected, and therefore said people will act more openly. There are a myriad of such known cases, in fact the examples are endless.

So if one is in Russia... beware, for ways to get around blocking which work, may be ways secretly controlled by the Russian state. An example is a VPN service which is secretly run by the state, regardless of where it is incorporated or physically located.

Another example is blocking products which are effective, but letting products which are easily MITM by the state to "work", thereby providing the illusion of security and safety.

These tactics are thousands of years old, the employment of such methods is all that has changed. Make those which you distrust, use methods you control to organize. An example; the pub which is uses for meetings, is actually owned by state sympathizers, who claim otherwise.

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

#228

Post by blue_pants »

Georgelemental wrote: post #221
Const-me wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 supp…

> the arrest was lawful He was arrested for political speech, which is ipso facto an unjust violation of his fundamental human rights and of natural law. Putin's Russia also has "laws" that justify the arrest of dissidents, doesn't make it OK. (And many of the other people on Lira's list were simply summarily executed, without any trial or other legal process)

I don't know what political speech means to you.

Are you aware that Ukraine engaged in an existential war? Gonzalo Lira was justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine, denying the facts of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian cities, as well as massacres of civilian Ukrainians by Russian invaders in Bucha and other cities.

Then he was taken into custody because he violated the terms of his bail and tried to escape. Originally meant to be under house arrest in Kharkiv, Lira was detained in another part of Ukraine: Zakarpattia Oblast, where he tried to cross the border into Hungary

There are a number of real journalists in Ukraine investigating big corruption cases, some of which have even resulted in the replacement of the Minister of Defense. These journalists have not faced assassination or imprisonment, although there have been instances of them being pressured in some ways

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

#230

Post by pvaldes »

genman wrote: post #167
MrDisposable wrote: post #107

Russian here, living in Russia. My paid VPN provider stopped working months ago. Then my self-hosted Outline server stopped working. Then my self-hosted OpenVPN stopped working too. Both were hosten on Digital Ocean (Frankfurt). What currently works for me is self-hosted Outline running on an US server, but I suspect that won't last long. Looks like I have no choice but to learn how to self-host XRay. A smart friend…

I was so hopeful in the beginning of 90s. There was sense of harmony all over the Northern hemisphere. But then Russia started to quickly become more and more aggressive, yes, first in the rhetoric, but then Putin came and the shit became real. Now I understand that the Russian society first had a kind of agreement with him - they don't mind the politics and Putin doesn't mind them. It looks like it has played out we…

Disclaimer: This is just an opinion and I'm not expert in Russian affairs in any way

I assume that Russians know but choose to ignore it. Russian frontiers are simply too big to became closed to external info forever. There are a million ways to sneak terabytes of videos among the import containers. Just a pigeon carrier with a SD or micro SD card would pass the blockage.

But it doesn't matter. Showing the carnage and the lies of the government of the last two years will not move a hair. IMAO, Russians are in an archetypal abusive relationship with Putin. In this cases, the abused lives in denial, too afraid to break the bubble. As long as there is a tiny chance that the grinder-meat will stop before they reach top of the list, will obey and remain quiet as a flock of sheep. They will choose to please their abuser hoping to remain low in the punish list.

Most of the 302.000 Russians killed in this war either never see it coming, or were too paralyzed to make a move and put themselves out of the frying pan (And videos in Avdiivka for example are crystal clear showing that is exactly that: a chain of frozen blue hamburgers running towards a giant frying pan).

Unfortunately a lot more will die this year, so the army remains distracted dying, far from turning their focus towards Kremlin. Unless they will break the spell, the eventual disintegration of Russia in smaller states vassals of China seems more and more probable each day.

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