Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election • Hacker News Board

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#241

Post by macinjosh » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #216

pydry wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just like when Crimea voted to join Russia it was 97% [1]. In Crimea's case the majority of the population being ethnically russian, the neglect from Ukraine, anger over the maidan, russia promising pension payments and infrastructure investment and the opposition boycotting the vote probably all contributed to this result. As far as I know the main thrust of the argument against this vote from the EU and Ukraine wa…

Also, let's not forget, the Ukrainian government was just over thrown by a western-backed coup. Of course, you won't know that from the Wikipedia cliff notes, but that's what happened.

Exactly, reminds me of when Asst. Sec. of State Victoria Nuland went and handed out sandwiches to supporters of the coup in the Maidan! And we have the nerve to be upset when other countries meddle in our affairs? How would we feel if a high-level Russian diplomat went out on the streets in the DC protests and handed out food to members of antifa or the alt-right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztt72mpTPXA

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#242

Post by asenk » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

0xy wrote: post #223

dmix wrote: post #104

I've noticed this in other countries where there are accusations of rigging the results that the ratios always super high, in this case 80%. If you're going to fake an election result that had some legitimate measurable opposition, why make it so extremely high? Does that mean nearly every vote counting place is rigged and it's so bad they don't even bother hiding it? Just like when Crimea voted to join Russia it was…

Independent polls including from Pew Research support the 97% figure. I believe Pew polled at north of 90%. High polling numbers are not automatically suspicious.

Opinion polling is only valid in places where you can freely have opinions.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#243

Post by ClumsyPilot » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #33

tapvt wrote: post #21

A case where I feel amateur (ham) radio would be a potential lifeline to the outside world.

If a tyrannical government is willing to cut off internet access, what makes you think they won't also ban ham radio transmissions (enforcing via violent means) as well?

That's completely impractical. Internet has a central switch you can flip, they have bigger problems now than driving around a fairly large country looking for antennas.

If I installed a raduo antenna on top of an apartment block, the average cop wont distinguish it from a 4G antenna or whatever else installed nearby. Plus you have to climb the rooftip and inspect it, imagine the amount of time an manpower that would take. Meanwhile they have nassive protests on the streets, etc.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#244

Post by tanatocenose » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

gpm wrote: post #69

3pt14159 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely if there are telephone communications then someone can modem out? Or are they scanning for non-human communication over telephony?

The number of people with the hardware and know how to send data over a telephone line is probably very small.

Slightly ironic since this was once the only way. Brb investing in a modem.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#245

Post by est31 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #122

est31 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any country which has the capability of shooting down satellites has more influence than countries which can't do it. But even a country with like 100 million residents, if it doesn't have a space program (or someone protecting it with a space program), it doesn't have much of a say.

Anti-satellite weaponry doesn't really apply here for the same reason land based artillery doesn't apply for trying to block pirate radio coming from a neighboring country

You can also use a different analogy of an airplane that's in a foreign country's airspace without permission, not following any instructions by ATC.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#246

Post by kube-system » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:25 AM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #67

hamiltont wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI - we have been able to get regular SMS and voice calls through (using Google Fi as our carrier). It was great to go from "absolute zero communication" to "we know you're currently OK"

Surely if there are telephone communications then someone can modem out? Or are they scanning for non-human communication over telephony?

Not with Google Fi, at least. Cellular networks are optimized for human voice and the compression will typically break the protocols originally designed to transfer data over landlines.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#247

Post by jariel » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:27 AM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #225

Waterluvian wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the odds this is some western commercially packaged product that lets them do all this? Like some Sandvine stuff or whatever.

The Chinese are also rather good at shutting down the internet as well. why not blame all possible parties?

"why not blame all possible parties?"

10 years ago I would have said 'it's probably Western companies helping them'.

Now, I would say probably it's Chinese. Frankly, because it's going to be so, so much cheaper, let alone it probably doesn't come with any potential political headaches, and, they are developing a 'core competency' in this.

That said, Putin has serious geopolitical interest in Belarus, and himself is supportive of the regime. Since the Russian state is also 'good at that stuff' it could very well be a state-sponsored initiative.

Finally, Belarus is not Venezuela, wherein they might have difficulty recruiting all the talent necessary to do this. Belarus has enough native talent to contemplate the task.

But it'd be interesting to know 'who' is helping them do this.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#248

Post by kube-system » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 3:37 AM UTC

gpm wrote: post #173

betterunix2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: how would a satellite ISP know where a user is located? Moreover, how can a satellite ISP ensure that its signals are not entering a particular country, especially a geographically small country?

If you just took a standard antenna that approximately speaking broadcast evenly in every direction, you couldn't (or at least you would have to bother triangulating the signal). If you did that though you wouldn't be able to offer high speed internet because you would be incredibly bandwidth constrained. Instead, what these satellites are doing is using something called a phased array antenna, that let's them narrow…

These new generations of satellite constellations also are proposed to operate at MUCH lower altitudes and in much greater numbers than something in geosynchronous orbit. We're talking distances closer than the ISS, which is this far away: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ISS-42_Florida_in_th...

Doesn't seem like it would be that hard of a task at that proximity.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#249

Post by qmarchi » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

manquer wrote: post #196

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I continue to be baffled by this argument that starlink et all are going to somehow crack open totalitarian states. There's not a chance in the world of any of these companies risking their licensing and relationship with the ITU. No one is going to be smuggling in ground terminals, let alone macgyvering their own, because the network isn't gonna talk back.

in a small enough country , location could be spoofed perhaps ? Or in the border regions it could be harder to block ?

The trick is that a Sat must know where it is, and the fact that Starlink operate at LEO, they only have a solid visibility of a few hundred square km.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#250

Post by ardy42 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:09 AM UTC

yabones wrote: post #190

I have some close acquaintances in BY, so this has been hard. We saw that (at least as of 8 PM UTC) outbound connections to HTTP servers wasn't really a problem. A fresh ec2 box with a basic web server wasn't effected. So, early yesterday I set up an OpenVPN server on ec2 (eu-west-1) to try to get some slow but functional internet access. What we saw was that about 15-30 seconds after the TLS handshake the connection…

> Tonight we're going to try using an xor tcp proxy to obfuscate the VPN traffic.

You might want to pad the traffic too. IIRC, the GFW can detect many kinds of VPN connections based off of a sequence of characteristic packet lengths during the handshake.