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The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

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Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#61

Post by novok »

vbezhenar wrote: post #58
dweekly wrote: post #15

The snooping of unencrypted SNI in the TLS handshake is a known weakness that is still mostly unresolved despite four years of standardization effort. The encrypted SNI work has been revised and updated to encrypted ClientHello and is still technically an IETF draft and not yet formalized in an RFC: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-tls-esni/ That said, CloudFlare, Firefox, and Chromium teams have all been…

And it means that state firewalls will just block all CDNs.

The idea is you force them to choose the entire effective internet or nothing, which is not an economic self own even most dictatorships are willing to make.

These firewalls are an exercise in having your cake and eating it too.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#62

Post by eternalban »

LastTrain wrote: post #10

I almost stopped reading at "neo-liberal", man that term is getting boring, especially when used in non-sequitur fashion like "The most severe disruption is when the regime turns off all cell towers and all local Internet. They just pull the plug and it's game over for any neo-liberal smart-arse that thinks v2ray/tor/shadowsocks is the solution". WTF does that even mean? What does the author think it means?

The Iranian regime classifies enemies ("counter revolutionaries" in the old days). We have the hypocrites "MEK", monarchists, a newly minted "meddlesome Shia" (mainly Iraqis but basically any Shia who disagrees Khamenei is God's Shadow on earth smh), and westernized youth "neo-liberals". So OP's sentence makes perfect sense actually.

p.s.

Basically the occupation theocratic regime of IR positions itself in its propaganda to demoralize Iranian resistance by prophecies of doom and gloom for Iran should it be cured of the IR disease: there is ISIS or Daesh [or "it will Syria 2.0"] (aka terror); there is that crafty prince in KSA that wants Iran to parition; there is the crafty sultan in Turkie (sic) that has pan turk on his mind; and should the country remain intact let there be no doubt that "neo-liberals" will do a Greece or whatever to Iran.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#63

Post by keyme »

Air dropping starlink terminals onto protesters is the solution.

In fact, if you live anywhere outside of the US, owning one "just in case" is good for future proofing your freedom, IMHO. Kind of like being armed.

Edit: in fact, starlink v2 global LTE-from-space coverage will be a true game changer for world freedom. We can only hope this comes to be sooner rather than later.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#64

Post by didibus »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #22
LastTrain wrote: post #10

I almost stopped reading at "neo-liberal", man that term is getting boring, especially when used in non-sequitur fashion like "The most severe disruption is when the regime turns off all cell towers and all local Internet. They just pull the plug and it's game over for any neo-liberal smart-arse that thinks v2ray/tor/shadowsocks is the solution". WTF does that even mean? What does the author think it means?

Eh, I don't like neo-liberal either, but its usage here made me chuckle. I'm probably a "neo-liberal" since I generally believe in human rights (including free speech) and also that capitalism (for all its faults) has a dramatically better track record than socialism or communism.

I was super confused by the authors use of neoliberal and I'm also confused by how you use the term.

A liberal is someone who values individual freedoms and human rights.

A neoliberal is someone who values deregulated economy, privatization of all things, free markets, free trade, and open economic borders.

The Iranian regime would be a conservative one, where they value limited social rights that favor some social morals over the individuals own, like what women/men can and can't do, what you can and can't eat, what you can and can't drink, what you can and can't teach or believe in, etc.

The Iranian economic model is a mixed bag, kind of a social-caputalist mix, with lots of state owned and managed enterprise, but also allowing private ones. That said it comes with a lot of regulations to have them enforce the conservative social norms.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#65

Post by neither_color »

computerfriend wrote: post #42
neither_color wrote: post #27

On bad days: Key word is bad days. Expats in China have noticed the same thing, with VPNs sporadically not working during summits, around certain holidays, etc but resuming afterwards. Also, for some reason certain VPNs work more consistently than others even though they use the same protocols as blocked services. Some speculate that the ones that continue to work are either honeypots or the companies behind them hav…

> but resuming afterwards. This is a common and natural misconception. When the firewall gains a feature (i.e. the ability to block certain traffic) the VPN providers then have to figure out some technique to bypass it. This happens over and over again. The firewall isn't relaxing after the event, it is staying the same and the VPN provider has improved. On your second point, I can't comment for all providers, but I'…

Thanks for clarifying. I admit it's anecdotal but was wondering if these new features are rolled out automatically or with humans deploying them? If the latter it might explain why expats in China have said it [access to VPNs] gets worse at times.

Years ago one provider that rhymes with krill was pretty consistent, but in the end it seemed one could get the most mileage(err uptime) by rolling their own v2ray instances on a VPS provider that had "Hong Kong" servers in Hangzhou.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#66

Post by joisig »

keyme wrote: post #63

Air dropping starlink terminals onto protesters is the solution. In fact, if you live anywhere outside of the US, owning one "just in case" is good for future proofing your freedom, IMHO. Kind of like being armed. Edit: in fact, starlink v2 global LTE-from-space coverage will be a true game changer for world freedom. We can only hope this comes to be sooner rather than later.

Why only outside of the US?

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#67

Post by lasfter »

joisig wrote: post #66
keyme wrote: post #63

Air dropping starlink terminals onto protesters is the solution. In fact, if you live anywhere outside of the US, owning one "just in case" is good for future proofing your freedom, IMHO. Kind of like being armed. Edit: in fact, starlink v2 global LTE-from-space coverage will be a true game changer for world freedom. We can only hope this comes to be sooner rather than later.

Why only outside of the US?

Presumably if there's a problem within the US, Starlink would be compromised.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#68

Post by keyme »

lasfter wrote: post #67
joisig wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why only outside of the US?

Presumably if there's a problem within the US, Starlink would be compromised.

Indeed. You would need a starlink competitor from another jurisdiction to fight US censorship if that comes to be.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#69

Post by LastTrain »

unethical_ban wrote: post #46
LastTrain wrote: post #10

I almost stopped reading at "neo-liberal", man that term is getting boring, especially when used in non-sequitur fashion like "The most severe disruption is when the regime turns off all cell towers and all local Internet. They just pull the plug and it's game over for any neo-liberal smart-arse that thinks v2ray/tor/shadowsocks is the solution". WTF does that even mean? What does the author think it means?

I'm a liberal by most definitions but I didn't reject a decent technical article by presumably an advocate of political freedom in Iran because of my sensitive sensibility.

Did your sensibilities keep you from reading the rest of my comment? Sadly, it didn't keep me from reading the article - which had no interesting information on the GFI in particular or even firewalls in general. I should have went with my gut on this one.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#70

Post by missedthecue »

keyme wrote: post #63

Air dropping starlink terminals onto protesters is the solution. In fact, if you live anywhere outside of the US, owning one "just in case" is good for future proofing your freedom, IMHO. Kind of like being armed. Edit: in fact, starlink v2 global LTE-from-space coverage will be a true game changer for world freedom. We can only hope this comes to be sooner rather than later.

Until having a starlink terminal on your roof becomes punishable by death. You can try to hide them visually, but Iran could always detect them electronically if they want to put in the effort.
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