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How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

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Re: How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

#31

Post by jgrahamc »

bubblethink wrote: post #30
jgrahamc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with Cloudflare, though. If you use HTTP instead of HTTPS then you are at risk on any network (India or elsewhere) of the things you describe. Use HTTPS.

This is a more subtle point about how cloudflare's flexible ssl works. The linked post describes a situation where the end user sees the ssl padlock, but the traffic is still getting MITM'ed between cloudflare and origin because it is not over https.

There's no reason to use Flexible SSL. Cloudflare will support any certificate on the origin server (e.g. Let's Encrypt if you don't want to pay someone), or will give you a free "Origin CA" certificate.

Re: How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

#32

Post by zuron7 »

timthelion wrote: post #23

Aren't there few enough urls that are registered that it should be easy to figure out which ones are blocked? It looks like there are only about a billion http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/ With 1000 connections at 1 dns lookup per second that would be just 12 days. Anyone want to spin up some AWS instances in India and find out?

Not worth it. The blocking that the government uses blocks only the http version of the sites. Append an s manually and access is restored. But to the uninitiated that block poses enough of a challenge.

Re: How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

#33

Post by bubblethink »

jgrahamc wrote: post #31
bubblethink wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a more subtle point about how cloudflare's flexible ssl works. The linked post describes a situation where the end user sees the ssl padlock, but the traffic is still getting MITM'ed between cloudflare and origin because it is not over https.

There's no reason to use Flexible SSL. Cloudflare will support any certificate on the origin server (e.g. Let's Encrypt if you don't want to pay someone), or will give you a free "Origin CA" certificate.

Yes, that's fine. The problem is offering flexible ssl in the first place. It is not the end user's job to verify if the traffic between cloudflare and origin is encrypted.

Re: How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

#34

Post by eat_veggies »

Tech-Noir wrote: post #27
shubhamjain wrote: post #9

Indian state wields too much power over everything. I guess it's remnant of a socialistic past. Consider this: CBFC is film certification board that can block a movie's release until appropriate cuts are made subject to their whims and fancies. This makes no logical sense. Why should the Govt. interfere in whatever the movie wants to show? The max stipulation should be on what content is appropriate to which age grou…

> Television programmes can be asked to censor everything from expletives Not only does this happen in the US, it's legendary, and can lead to comedy gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4koLWPq2qDY (Warning: clip contains uncensored expletives.) > Hell, Karnataka Govt. even tried to cap the price of movie tickets. This just sounds like a good thing to me. The state government was under pressure from Kannada organis…

It sounds good but price ceilings rarely help people. The free market generally does a good enough job at finding the optimal price. It's easy enough to say that movie theater owners are greedy and just want more money, but that's exactly why they're even in the business--to make money. If you remove that incentive, they really have to reason to continue operating.

You can see this in action in New York with its rent controls: the government decided the common man needed to be able to afford housing. Seems like a noble goal, but soon landlords couldn't afford to fix their houses or pay for utilities, and so they left the market. And nobody was going to start a new apartment and nobody was going to fund one because it's unprofitable. As a result, the housing situation is even worse than how it was before.

Re: How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

#36

Post by codegladiator »

eat_veggies wrote: post #34
Tech-Noir wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Television programmes can be asked to censor everything from expletives Not only does this happen in the US, it's legendary, and can lead to comedy gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4koLWPq2qDY (Warning: clip contains uncensored expletives.) > Hell, Karnataka Govt. even tried to cap the price of movie tickets. This just sounds like a good thing to me. The state government was under pressure from Kannada organis…

It sounds good but price ceilings rarely help people. The free market generally does a good enough job at finding the optimal price. It's easy enough to say that movie theater owners are greedy and just want more money, but that's exactly why they're even in the business--to make money. If you remove that incentive, they really have to reason to continue operating. You can see this in action in New York with its rent…

There is no free market. They would sell popcorn at 2x the movie ticket cost. And the movie ticket costs are absurd here in karnataka. And its all one player game.

Re: How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

#37

Post by timthelion »

zuron7 wrote: post #32
timthelion wrote: post #23

Aren't there few enough urls that are registered that it should be easy to figure out which ones are blocked? It looks like there are only about a billion http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/ With 1000 connections at 1 dns lookup per second that would be just 12 days. Anyone want to spin up some AWS instances in India and find out?

Not worth it. The blocking that the government uses blocks only the http version of the sites. Append an s manually and access is restored. But to the uninitiated that block poses enough of a challenge.

But if we are speculating on what sort of websites are blocked, that method would reduce the uncertainty. It might even lead to the uncovering of something scandalous, like the discovery of a website being blocked for revealing evil truths about the current government.

Re: How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

#38

Post by aptwebapps »

jgrahamc wrote: post #31
bubblethink wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a more subtle point about how cloudflare's flexible ssl works. The linked post describes a situation where the end user sees the ssl padlock, but the traffic is still getting MITM'ed between cloudflare and origin because it is not over https.

There's no reason to use Flexible SSL. Cloudflare will support any certificate on the origin server (e.g. Let's Encrypt if you don't want to pay someone), or will give you a free "Origin CA" certificate.

"There's no reason to use Flexible SSL."

Then why do you offer it?

Re: How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

#39

Post by jgrahamc »

aptwebapps wrote: post #38
jgrahamc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to use Flexible SSL. Cloudflare will support any certificate on the origin server (e.g. Let's Encrypt if you don't want to pay someone), or will give you a free "Origin CA" certificate.

"There's no reason to use Flexible SSL." Then why do you offer it?

Because there are instances where the customer cannot put an SSL certificate on their server. So, I probably should have said "almost no reason".

Re: How many URLs/Websites are blocked in India? Government gives different answers

#40

Post by wav-part »

zuron7 wrote: post #32
timthelion wrote: post #23

Aren't there few enough urls that are registered that it should be easy to figure out which ones are blocked? It looks like there are only about a billion http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/ With 1000 connections at 1 dns lookup per second that would be just 12 days. Anyone want to spin up some AWS instances in India and find out?

Not worth it. The blocking that the government uses blocks only the http version of the sites. Append an s manually and access is restored. But to the uninitiated that block poses enough of a challenge.

Not true anymore. https are getting blocked too.

Last few lines of `curl --trace - https://thepiratebay.org/` on Jio ISP. Full log https://gist.github.com/anonymous/27ddfa674233d8d17a007f1b3f...

    => Send SSL data, 5 bytes (0x5)
    0000: 15 03 03 00 1a                                  .....
    == Info: TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS alert, Server hello (2):
    => Send SSL data, 2 bytes (0x2)
    0000: 02 46                                           .F
    == Info: error:1408F10B:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_RECORD:wrong version number
    == Info: Closing connection 0
So TLS handshake is being interrupted. If you think about it, https blocking is actually more efficient.

curl log does not show the last fake rcvd packet. Anyone know how to do that ?

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