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Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

reuters.com

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Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#71

Post by baq »

ISL wrote: post #32
gerhardi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god.. So you really think that a totalitarian control over what the country's population is allowed to view on the Internet is somehow a good thing and a way to stop brain drain? How come other countries manage to have their cultures flourish on the age of the Internet? I just can't see this kind of blocking bringing anything good for Russia..

There is a reasonable chance that the throwaway poster intended to be divisive, whether as a troll or something more intentional.

The problem is, it's likely a real person with an honest opinion. Russians really think that Russia is the greatest country and the best culture on the planet, not only the uneducated, but the intellectuals as well.

Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#72

Post by azangru »

pixelperfect wrote: post #56
anonymfus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is some Stockholm syndrome thinking. I am Russian and I like this escalation because it makes more people to hate Putin making overthrow of his regime more likely.

> I am Russian and I like this escalation because it makes more people to hate Putin making overthrow of his regime more likely. Is there any chance of that happening? I am not Russian but my impression is that a large majority of Russians favor Putin and it's hard to imagine how he could be overthrown.

> I am not Russian but my impression is that a large majority of Russians favor Putin and it's hard to imagine how he could be overthrown.

A massive peaceful protest that the leader is powerless to suppress and that forces him to step down is just one (and very happy) scenario of overthrowing a leader. This indeed is not very likely to happen.

There always remains a military coup, however, which does not require a support of the population.

But overthrowing a government is a scary business. Who is going to come in their stead? Will their be a power struggle? Will it turn violent? Will their be a civil war (a very real prospect in a country such as Russia, where the provinces have historically been exploited by the metropolis and strongly despise it). I am astonished people here talk so lightly of overthrowing Putin, as if he is the only villain and the only obstacle to the better future, and once he is removed from the scene everything is hunky-dory.

Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#73

Post by threeseed »

baq wrote: post #71
ISL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reasonable chance that the throwaway poster intended to be divisive, whether as a troll or something more intentional.

The problem is, it's likely a real person with an honest opinion. Russians really think that Russia is the greatest country and the best culture on the planet, not only the uneducated, but the intellectuals as well.

Russia has a population of 100+ million. They don't all think the same.

Many of them absolutely understand the challenges facing the country.

Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#74

Post by codedokode »

splatzone wrote: post #64
codedokode wrote: post #48

Telegram invented a smart thing to evade blocking. They made a proxy server and allowed the person hosting it to add a promo link for every user connecting through this server. This way Telegram channel owners are motivated to host such proxy servers and distribute their addresses so that their channel gets promoted for users of this server (and they get more readers and more profit). So even if hosting providers lik…

Do you have a link for more information about their proxy server? I've struggled to find anything. Thanks!

I forgot to mention, Telegram also uses its own URL scheme to pass proxy settings so you can send the link to friends or publish it online and they will only have to click it to start using proxy. No need to dig through the settings and type in complicated IP addresses.

The link looks like tg://proxy?arguments

Proxy uses MTProto, the same protocol that client uses to talk to the server. It is described here: https://core.telegram.org/mtproto The client connects to the proxy as if it were a server, and proxy just relays encrypted packets to the real server. Also, the client may wrap packets with an obfuscation layer (described below) to prevent signature detection. In exchange, the server tells the client to display a channel of the proxy owner in the contact list while proxy is being used.

Proxy source on Github (with Docker image link): https://github.com/TelegramMessenger/MTProxy

Bing-translated Russian article about this proxy: https://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=ht...

Bing-translated review of methods Telegram uses to bypass filtering by an independent researcher: https://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=ht...

And a little more on obfuscation: https://blog.susanka.eu/how-telegram-obfuscates-its-mtproto-...

This article mentions that Telegram uses modified version of obfuscated2 protocol. To detect it the DPI just needs to decode all packets using AES but that would require a lot of CPU power which ISPs currently don't have. Initially all encrypted packets had fixed length so some ISPs started filtering packets by length (of course accidentally filtering non-Telegram packets too but who cares), and Telegram added random padding to prevent this.

Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#75

Post by noelsusman »

pixelperfect wrote: post #56
anonymfus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is some Stockholm syndrome thinking. I am Russian and I like this escalation because it makes more people to hate Putin making overthrow of his regime more likely.

> I am Russian and I like this escalation because it makes more people to hate Putin making overthrow of his regime more likely. Is there any chance of that happening? I am not Russian but my impression is that a large majority of Russians favor Putin and it's hard to imagine how he could be overthrown.

Hard to say. Putin certainly thinks so. He's been paranoid of a US backed revolution for many years now, and probably for good reason since the US would definitely back anyone who opposes him. Accurate polling is hard for obvious reasons, but based on the independent polling I've seen, somewhere around a third of the population would be supportive of a new government.

Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#76

Post by frostburg »

azangru wrote: post #49
SEJeff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram did something the government didn't like, so the government tried to ban it and failed. All of the mess this caused is entirely the fault of the Russian Government, because Telegram didn't make these changes. I'd see thinking otherwise as a form of Victim Blaming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming

> Telegram did something the government didn't like, so the government tried to ban it and failed. All of the mess this caused is entirely the fault of the Russian Government, because Telegram didn't make these changes. It is a very strange logic. Telegram did something that no longer was legal under the Russian law. Yes, it may be a stupid law, and yes, it may be very selectively applied, and yes, it is the governme…

You're exactly arguing from from a legalistic perspective.

Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#77

Post by codedokode »

jes wrote: post #58
codedokode wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal or Keybase are not blocked in Russia. I suppose that is because they don't have many users like Telegram. WhatsApp is known to comply with Russian legislation (and ironically several of its addresses were accidentally blocked while trying to disrupt Telegram service).

Can you and would you say more about how WhatsApp accommodates Russian legislation?

I rechecked information and probably I was wrong. In Russia there is an official registry of companies and websites which are "distributors of information" and WhatsApp is not there. The companies in the registry are required by law to retain information about users at least for 6 months and provide it to authorities in some cases. Telegram is added to the registry.

In case anyone is curious to see what sites are interesting to the authorities, here is a copy of the registry in Russian [1] and a machine-translated version [2].

The first ones added to the registry in 2014 were a dating website (mamba), Russian social network VK, email services (Yandex and Mail.ru) and IT news websites Habrahabr and Roem. Probably developers and sysadmins are considered dangerous people so they need supervision.

Also there is a website snap.com operated by Snap Inc.

[1] https://reestr.rublacklist.net/distributors/

[2] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev...

Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#78

Post by codedokode »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #55
rizzin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of Russia, the company that made Telegram is headed by Pavel Durov, creator of the main Russian social network, vk.com. Don't know the exact history, but ultimately the social network ownership was transferred to a large IT corp, and Pavel Durov had some falling out with big wigs, and left Russia to create Telegram. He is a kind of a rebellious figure in modern Russia, and, as younger generation genera…

>> a lot of Russians use Telegram because of that. This is a big overstatement. Telegram received an initial traction from the vk.com userbase. It has very little to do with either the functionality (except may be the channels) or an ideological stance of he creators. VK simply advertised the messenger actively at launch. Practically all other IMs (except the earlier WhatsApp and Viber) have almost no userbase in Rus…

As I remember, Telegram first didn't even have the Russian language in UI and was used mostly in developing countries in South America and Middle Asia. For example, it was very popular in Iran and was used to spread information about recent anti-government protests [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%9318_Iranian_protes...

Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#79

Post by codedokode »

partyfaker wrote: post #14
charlesdm wrote: post #11

Didn't know you could do deep packet inspection on encrypted traffic? Anyone who can shed some light on how they might be doing this? I'm curious.

Telegram uses it's own custom MTProto protocol. Although the traffic is encrypted, it is identifiable as Telegram traffic (fixed structure, identifiable prefix for packets). There's an outcry for them to use TLS but I didn't see that they said anything about that. Here's a nice article for more info: https://blog.susanka.eu/how-telegram-obfuscates-its-mtproto-...

The MTProto traffic (which can be detected by signature) is wrapped into an obfuscation layer by some clients (including the official one). This layer makes packet look like random bytes. Earlier it has a flaw making all packets the same length and some ISPs started blocking packets by length by later it was fixed.

This my comment contains more links about protocol and obfuscation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17888241

Re: Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger

#80

Post by lucb1e »

aaomidi wrote: post #22
partyfaker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram uses it's own custom MTProto protocol. Although the traffic is encrypted, it is identifiable as Telegram traffic (fixed structure, identifiable prefix for packets). There's an outcry for them to use TLS but I didn't see that they said anything about that. Here's a nice article for more info: https://blog.susanka.eu/how-telegram-obfuscates-its-mtproto-...

It's not like TLS would've fixed this. Iran is blocking Telegram very easily. If they also used anything with TLS 1.3 or HTTPS with TLS 1.2, the plaintext SNI would've been enough to detect Telegram.

Wait, didn't TLS 1.3 have encrypted SNI? I haven't yet read up on the details but iirc that was one of the major new things.
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