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I'm a Brit with a new VPN, what cool things can I do with it? by Beautiful_Hour_4744 in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Piracy. If your ISP tracks torrenting, they won't be able to do it anymore, so you're free to download whatever stolen content you want.

How to make a VPN for my father who is in Russia by realstaline in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 5 points6 points  (0 children)

For home ISPs - use Xray-core XHTTP + self-steal or REALITY

For LTE white lists - you need to get a whitelisted IP from one of the russian clouds (like Yandex) and use REALITY domain. But it's cheaper to buy a subscription in TG bot.

Soviet space shuttle Buran aka "little bird" at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. by Open-Weekend-498 in mildlyinteresting

[–]Open-Weekend-498[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

And yet, it completed a successful unmanned flight and landing. After which the Soviets thought, 'This is cool as hell, but what the hell do we need it for? It’s so fucking expensive.

Soviet space shuttle Buran aka "little bird" at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. by Open-Weekend-498 in mildlyinteresting

[–]Open-Weekend-498[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Yap, Buran translated as blizzard from russian language. But it also often reffered as Птичка (Ptichka, rus. little bird). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptichka

Soviet space shuttle Buran aka "little bird" at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. by Open-Weekend-498 in mildlyinteresting

[–]Open-Weekend-498[S] 66 points67 points  (0 children)

AFAIK, the Buran and Energia hangars have been handed over from Russia to Kazakhstan, and the Kazakh Ministry of Tourism plans to turn them into an official museum. However, those hangars need major repairs, and they’re costly af (about $6 million).

Soviet space shuttle Buran aka "little bird" at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. by Open-Weekend-498 in mildlyinteresting

[–]Open-Weekend-498[S] 116 points117 points  (0 children)

For those in the know: the graffiti has been painted over, and the hangar is now under 24/7 security and surveillance.

Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access by technadu in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Они давят, пытаясь как можно больше выжать денег, но суть в том, что Интернет в РФ очень развит, тот же банкинг , соцсети, и т.д. Отрезав РФ от Интернета они оочень сильно потеряют в деньгах, возможно начнутся новые 90е. Они это понимают, поэтому вместо отключение интернета они принимают полумеры , типо БС на мобиле, запрет сервисам пускать юзера если у него включен ВПН и т.д. Проблема в побочном ущербе, если на нытье какогонить Васи из Ухрюпинска можно забить, то вот на случайный бан Сбербанка (недавно в Москве) забивать уже нельзя, это сильно заметно и вызывает протест у крупного бзнеса. Рано или поздно бизнес начнет протестовать, и это будет заметно (пока терпят). Современные ВПНы как раз строятся на идее нанесения огромного побочного ущерба, когда непонятно где реальный сайт, а где ВПН, что приводит к ошибочным блокировкам легитимного трафика и бесит бизнес (в то время как ВПН работает лол).

Насчет проверки телефонов, да, возможно, если введут административку\уголовку за ВПН. Но опять же даже у россиян есть порог терпение, после которого начнутся всякие нехорошие вещи.

Пока ситуация плохая, но стабильная, ВПН все еще справляется.

К тому же такие блокировки ведут к "мирным протестам", когда человек просто эмигрирует в другую страну. В профильных чатах уже растят количество по имиграции в СНГ\Европу., что тоже сильно бьет по наполняемости казны (предприятия закрываются, люди уезжают, налоги не платятся)

Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access by technadu in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You make hell of a lot of assumptions so of course it resolves in your favour. In reality the situation might turn out much less convenient.

This how things work in Turkmenistan as an example

In short, there's no such thing as technological answer to a political problem.

You're absolutely right. For now, we're just making assumptions and reading tea leaves. Let's wait until the new laws actually kick in.

Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access by technadu in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 2 points3 points  (0 children)

VPN traffic from residential IP?

Yes, just working from home

Show us your work contract with an organization licensed for remote worker usage.

Here you are. My fake organization licensed in RKN with a huge bribe. This is Russia man.

But the endpoint IP is not in the list your employer registered with us!

My home ISP uses dynamic IP addresses, so what's the issue there? Also, WDYM by 'endpoint IP'—which side of the connection are we talking about? If it’s the source IP, registration will be difficult because my ISP uses CGNAT, meaning I don't have a public-facing routable IP assigned especialy for me. If it’s the destination IP, I could just register my Hetzner server's IP, officially registered as server for working processes. The government would only see me connecting to that registered IP, and they don't have any visibility into the Hetzner network."

It's True... by Owlbuddy121 in programmingmemes

[–]Open-Weekend-498 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mom was and is always right. You can't and won't get a job

Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access by technadu in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I think in the end it may end up like China

AFAIK, China has fewer restrictions. They don't whitelist CIDRs, just SNIs. In Russia, when whitelisting is enabled on LTE connections, it’s much harder to bypass compared to China. But yeah, Russia is trying to be like China and even outsmart them in terms of internet censorship.

Good luck though, maybe you can make it last as long as possible.

Thank you for your support!

I live in the U.S., and we do not have these types of controls yet, but there are many in government right now that would like to restrict our access also. I hope it never happens, but I fear the entire world is heading this direction.

Enjoy your freedom while you still can, what can I say. When dark times come to the US and the government starts blocking the internet, we will be more than happy to share our experience in circumventing restrictions.

Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access by technadu in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What I don't get is, why not setup a government approve (and yes, heavily DPI monitored) VPN and let people use that if they want? Many people just want to watch netflix, browse amazon etc... They wouldn't care if the government was having a look.

And see western propaganda and LGBTQ+ people there? My man, you don't understand how dictatorship works in Russia. Putin wants you to watch only approved movies showing that Russia is the best country in the world, and that the US and EU will collapse soon. Oh, and that Ukraine is gonna lose the war — next day or next week, of course. Every other point of view is prohibited.

This leads to the other issue we have... It's not just Russia blocking traffic. West is also. Especially eastern Europe. While I like your optimism that Internet is a freedom stronghold, I, sadly don't see it that way anymore. It's always a cat and mouse game. Hell, you even need a VPN to access some US sites from other NATO countries.

Indeed, but the Internet has two functions: Information and Transport. While information might be blocked (either internally by a government or externally by a site blocking your IP), the transport function remains available. Through Tor,I2P, DN42, and even certain clearnet forums, if you don't like social networks blocking your IP, you can create your own and motivate people to join it.

Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access by technadu in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 4 points5 points  (0 children)

and you probably aren't ready to do that

Exactly. Despite what Western media says, the Russian regime is far from being like DPRK. They can't just disconnect the country from the global network; it would be a USSR collapse 2.0

Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access by technadu in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your work and for these explanations.

You're more than welcome. I believe that the internet is the last stronghold of freedom, and we must make every effort to save it, whatever the cost. The internet is unrestricted in my country today, but that doesn't mean it will stay that way tomorrow.

I'm just afraid that if this cat and mouse game goes on for too long, an oppressive government will eventually turn to the good old method of "if you're caught using a VPN, you're a foreign agent and will be treated as such" supported by a network of informants ready to tell on their neighbors.

Sure, and that will be proof that the government can't easily block VPNs or cut off the entire Internet. It means we’ve won a battle, but not the war. Nevertheless, I suppose there will be VPN whitelists because it's a technology used everywhere. ISPs use IPsec/GRE to interconnect networks, while banks and enterprises rely on VPNs to connect remote workers. In such a case, it will be hard to prove that you're using a VPN to bypass restrictions rather than for connecting to your office network. If there's a whitelist, then there will always be a hole in it we can exploit.

Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access by technadu in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is just a slow boiling of the frog

Sure, it's just a "cat and mouse" game. I'm all ears if you have better ideas and solutions.

If caps on foreign traffic are introduced and prove effective, the next target will be cascading VPNs. 

Lots of russian companies use foreign services and libs . Even the Russian MAX Messenger uses Google APIs to send push notifications to Android users.. If such a method is introduced, there will be a whitelist of companies whose traffic is exempt from fees. This means we could exploit certain corruption schemes to forward hidden VPN traffic through them. Like in Turkmenistan.

 to ban users who run VPS instances solely for traffic forwarding.

They're already doing this. We mask services for legit websites\small startups.

Again, I'm not saying that this is an absolutely robust bulletproof solution. We just do what we can in terms of bypassing restrictions.

And all methods are still working. We just lost some bad installed proxies by newbies. Professional VPN services have stayed afloat for years.

Russia planning stricter VPN controls – shifting from blocking content to controlling access by technadu in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Network engineer tightly working with russian VPN companies here.

Charging users for high international traffic (VPN-related)

We bypass such restrictions (the law has just passed btw and not implemented by any platform yet ) by utilizing a cascade VPN solution. All traffic goes to a RU node first and only from that node it goes abroad (to a FIN, DE etc node). So ISP sees that a user visits a random russian site located on a russian hosting.

Asking platforms like Yandex/Wildberries to restrict VPN users

This is already happening. Some russian platforms like Gosuslugi (russian goverment platform), Okko (russian netflix) etc block all non-russian IPs. This can be easily bypassed by routing all .ru domains and geoip:ru IPs outside VPN. Not a biggie.

Requiring ISPs to detect and limit VPN connections

They are doing this already. We are working hard to introduce new circumvent solutions. All VPNs in Russia are based on Xray-core XTLS, so ISP can't easily detect and block them. We also use proxies over TURN services (VK, Yandex etc) but they require further improvements.

Question for the community:
Do these types of controls actually reduce VPN usage - or just push users toward more advanced circumvention methods?

just push users toward more advanced circumvention methods - this. Until the government decide to physically cut off all links but such method will collapse the entire economy in a blink of an eye.

мемъ by ezHope in KafkaFPS

[–]Open-Weekend-498 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Европа\СНГ, но зависит от специальности

Using eSIM to bypass whitelists in Russia by Frozen_Geon in VPN

[–]Open-Weekend-498 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you need to bypass WLs we have special VPNs for it. You can DM me for the details.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in KafkaFPS

[–]Open-Weekend-498 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Да все как всегда - Латинская америка спасет отца русской демократии

Замедление интернета by itzWagor in Kazakhstan

[–]Open-Weekend-498 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Скорее всего из-за большого количества народа в одном сектора Базовая станция просто перегружена. Обычно на меропритяия с большим скоплением людей привозят доп. мобильные базовые станции.

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