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

How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]

gfw.report

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 289 posts

Re: How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]

#111

Post by H8crilA »

jcarrano wrote: post #101
mensetmanusman wrote: post #98

China doesn't realize how much they are being held back by meaningless investments of time and expertise on this. They spend almost the same %GDP as the US does on the US military as on their internal suppression forces. Maybe it's good for the world that they burn so much talent and wealth on adding inefficiency to their internal information exchange.

It is not the goal of the CCP to advance China as it is to keep themselves in power.

I would disagree. The leading organization is much more aligned with the needs of the nation than the likes of Iran or Russia, which probably wouldn't mind bombing the shit out of their own city if it was necessary to stay in power.

For example they actually bow to American pressure and try to avoid sanctions or other trade problems. As of today their navy could be completely destroyed with like 30% of the US Navy, so any naval blockade is probably unbreakable for them. Iran's hunta would (and did) just say "whatever" and continued tanking the GDP.

Another example - the Chinese intelligence helps domestic industries, even those that are far from the defense business.

Re: How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]

#112

Post by ed25519FUUU »

Herring wrote: post #109
mensetmanusman wrote: post #98

China doesn't realize how much they are being held back by meaningless investments of time and expertise on this. They spend almost the same %GDP as the US does on the US military as on their internal suppression forces. Maybe it's good for the world that they burn so much talent and wealth on adding inefficiency to their internal information exchange.

I wouldn't be so sure that it's a bad idea. Look how social media has damaged democracy around the world. US democracy is stuck in a bit of a death spiral - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/how-stop-m... . I hate repression, but they've been at it for thousands of years and I'm no longer super confident we have something better (see citizens united, roe v wade, affirmative action). China's life expec…

Free speech causing problems for the USA yet again?

Re: How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]

#114

Post by gruez »

ballenf wrote: post #58

Would a steganographic hiding of payloads be possible and usably efficient inside permissible content/protocols? Has it been tried?

That would require mimicking an existing protocol, and as per the paper that's non-trivial

>Houmansadr et al. [39] conclude that mimicking a protocol is fundamentally flawed and suggest that tunneling through allowed protocols be a more censorship-resistant approach. Frolov and Wustrow [35] demonstrate that even when a tunneling approach is used, it still requires effort to perfectly align protocol fingerprints with popular implementations, in order to avoid blocking by protocol fingerprints. For instance, in 2012, China and Ethiopia deployed deep packet inspection to detect Tor traffic by its uncommon ciphersuits [44, 55, 67]. Censorship middlebox vendors have previously identified and blocked meek [29] traffic based on its TLS fingerprint and SNI value [28].

Re: How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]

#115

Post by nonethewiser »

guessmyname wrote: post #107
WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #3

I was wondering about simply using VPNs, which is not mentioned in the article at all, but checking GFW on Wikipedia, it tells: > The use of VPNs in China can provide individuals access to the international internet, but in China, it can be a potential legal risk. In 2017, the Chinese government declared all unauthorized VPN services to be illegal.[94] An example of the use of this punishment is Vera Zhou, a student…

More context about this WikiPedia excerpt: → https://www.chinafile.com/extensive-surveillance-china → https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/student-01272020075256.ht... It looks like 周月明 (Vera Yueming Zhou) was sent to a Chinese concentration camp mostly because she was part of a religious minority and not necessarily for using a VPN to access the University of Washington’s website. > Vera was living in her hometown of…

Just tragic. Hard to imagine living in such a backwards place

Re: How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]

#117

Post by gruez »

nikanj wrote: post #94
trallnag wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could China implement a MitM proxy for HTTPS traffic like many companies do?

No. Companies get around ssl issues by minting their own root CAs and configuring their workstations to trust them. China has no (technical) way of forcing you to trust their root CA

>China has no (technical) way of forcing you to trust their root CA

That might be true, but "install our root CA or you can't access websites" would get most people to do it.

Re: How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]

#118

Post by Herring »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #112
Herring wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure that it's a bad idea. Look how social media has damaged democracy around the world. US democracy is stuck in a bit of a death spiral - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/how-stop-m... . I hate repression, but they've been at it for thousands of years and I'm no longer super confident we have something better (see citizens united, roe v wade, affirmative action). China's life expec…

Free speech causing problems for the USA yet again?

I'd say the issue is "factionalism" as the US founding fathers identified it. Some group (elites, landlords, corporations, white people, etc) is looking out only for themselves at the expense of society in general. East Asian countries love enforcing their conformity and harmony.

Re: How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]

#119

Post by nonethewiser »

H8crilA wrote: post #111
jcarrano wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the goal of the CCP to advance China as it is to keep themselves in power.

I would disagree. The leading organization is much more aligned with the needs of the nation than the likes of Iran or Russia, which probably wouldn't mind bombing the shit out of their own city if it was necessary to stay in power. For example they actually bow to American pressure and try to avoid sanctions or other trade problems. As of today their navy could be completely destroyed with like 30% of the US Navy, s…

> which probably wouldn't mind bombing the shit out of their own city if it was necessary to stay in power

See the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Re: How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]

#120

Post by nonethewiser »

Herring wrote: post #109
mensetmanusman wrote: post #98

China doesn't realize how much they are being held back by meaningless investments of time and expertise on this. They spend almost the same %GDP as the US does on the US military as on their internal suppression forces. Maybe it's good for the world that they burn so much talent and wealth on adding inefficiency to their internal information exchange.

I wouldn't be so sure that it's a bad idea. Look how social media has damaged democracy around the world. US democracy is stuck in a bit of a death spiral - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/how-stop-m... . I hate repression, but they've been at it for thousands of years and I'm no longer super confident we have something better (see citizens united, roe v wade, affirmative action). China's life expec…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN