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Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

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Re: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

#21

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

ethotool wrote: post #3

Just my opinion but I think that non-interventionism should be promoted here. Especially when it comes to political situations like this. It’s a dangerous game.

It is not a game. Governments around the world, big and small have been seen turning internet off at the first sign of trouble. It only makes sense that we provide a way for the population to circumvent those efforts. As flawed as internet is, I still think it is worth defending and protecting from government overreach.

I will say even more. Other governments are watching and likely debating what could be used on their respective turfs. Something to think about.

Re: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

#22

Post by nanch »

ethotool wrote: post #3

Just my opinion but I think that non-interventionism should be promoted here. Especially when it comes to political situations like this. It’s a dangerous game.

I support non-interventionism as a default mode for public policy.

I also support the rights of private citizens living in a free society to act on their own behalf, however they see fit.

That's not a dangerous game, that's an excercise of the rights protected by the society they are part of.

Re: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

#23

Post by ummonk »

ethotool wrote: post #3

Just my opinion but I think that non-interventionism should be promoted here. Especially when it comes to political situations like this. It’s a dangerous game.

I don't see how providing internet connections to people in Iran constitutes intervention. What they do with those connections is up to them.

Re: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

#24

Post by metapsj »

anthk wrote: post #2

Briar works over Bluetooth, Wifi: https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/ https://briarproject.org/download-briar/

along the same line...

freemesh for wifi AP based mesh networks. not as convenient as briar, but considering the situation having multiple modes of communication seems like a good hedge.

  https://freemeshwireless.com/
also, if you can get a hold of lora wan based devices, e.g. esp32 w/ lorawan, you can set up a lorawan based mesh network with wifi entry points.

  https://meshtastic.org/

Re: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

#25

Post by _yb2s »

LinuxBender wrote: post #5

the servers inside Iranian data centers still have access to the outside world. Knowing that, the simplest and easiest solution that would avoid detection is to SSH tunnel into that datacenter and SSH-ProxyForward out of that datacenter into Amazon AWS via SSH and use that SSH proxy chain as a SOCKS proxy for browsers. Make sure the browser is using the SOCKS proxy (SSH) for its DNS. Many sites will make your friends…

The first hop, "SSH Client -> Iranian Datacenter" seems extremely vulnerable to surveillance, and would create an incriminating list of people involved. With this discussion in the open, you can bet Iranian authorities are going to specifically look for anything discussed here, so the only viable solutions should have no measurable deviation from normal behavior that would allow them to detect which datacenter was doing this.

To make this happen, you should have a minimum number of connections from inside Iran into the datacenter.

For a small group of trusted people with always on connections, you could just create a linear chain of SSH forwards connecting everyone. For widespread connectivity, a TOR bridge through the path you describe would be workable.

Re: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

#26

Post by jimbob45 »

For what was supposed to be a spontaneous protest, this all seems incredibly well-coordinated. Certainly wouldn’t be the first time a foreign government used riots to influence government policy. Even further, Khamenei may not last the year and such riots could heavily influence the selection of his successor, offering a strong motive to any country looking to engage in such espionage.

Re: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

#27

Post by worldofmatthew »

Everyone should install the snowflake extension as this allows you to create a bridge in to Tor with just a browser extension. An easy way to add to the Tor bridge IP pool without having to spin up a VPS.

An easy way to help someone in a censored country to access Tor.

https://snowflake.torproject.org/

Re: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

#29

Post by d0mine »

rcarr wrote: post #19
ethotool wrote: post #3

Just my opinion but I think that non-interventionism should be promoted here. Especially when it comes to political situations like this. It’s a dangerous game.

"Of course, you know of the Prime Directive, which tells us that we have no right to interfere with the natural evolution of alien worlds. Now I have sworn to uphold it, but nevertheless I have disregarded that directive on more than one occasion because I thought it was the right thing to do. Now, if you are holding on to some temporal equivalent of that directive, then isn't it possible that you have an occasion he…

The prime directive is not for peer civilization. Iran is not on a stone age (yet).

Re: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran

#30

Post by LinuxBender »

_yb2s wrote: post #25
LinuxBender wrote: post #5

the servers inside Iranian data centers still have access to the outside world. Knowing that, the simplest and easiest solution that would avoid detection is to SSH tunnel into that datacenter and SSH-ProxyForward out of that datacenter into Amazon AWS via SSH and use that SSH proxy chain as a SOCKS proxy for browsers. Make sure the browser is using the SOCKS proxy (SSH) for its DNS. Many sites will make your friends…

The first hop, "SSH Client -> Iranian Datacenter" seems extremely vulnerable to surveillance, and would create an incriminating list of people involved. With this discussion in the open, you can bet Iranian authorities are going to specifically look for anything discussed here, so the only viable solutions should have no measurable deviation from normal behavior that would allow them to detect which datacenter was do…

I considered that, but the small group of trusted people is a bit of a double-edged sword. If one person is taken and they do not have good OpSec they could expose that entire group of trusted friends and that would be a more valuable target to authorities. So in that case I would stick with having an accidentally exposed SSH in that datacenter.
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