Russia bans 50 VPNs and proxy servers in effort to block Telegram users

Cal Jeffrey

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Telegram is an encrypted messaging service that has recently become popular, especially in countries with restricted speech such as Iran and Russia.

In April, Russia requested that Google and Apple remove the Telegram app from their respective regional stores. The move followed a court order that blocked the app for failing to provide encryption keys to agencies such as Russia's Federal Security Service so they could easily access user messages. Telegram tried to circumvent the order by moving at least some of its services to different host servers.

Russia responded by blocking more than 15.8 million IP addresses, which hampered other services such as game servers, banking, retail, and cryptocurrency websites. According to self-proclaimed Russian news outlet Meduza, the country is blocking another 50 services consisting of VPNs and web anonymizers in an effort to thwart circumvention of the sweeping bans.

The government’s agency in charge of censorship Roskomnadzor did not disclose which services it was blocking. The only thing the it would confirm is that Viber, another popular messaging platform, would not be targeted in the embargo.

“Since April 16, the Russian authorities have blocked roughly 20 million IP addresses, including servers operated by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Digital Ocean,” says Meduza. “Roskomnadzor’s crackdown has disrupted a wide range of unrelated online services that rely on cloud computing hosted on blocked servers.”

Google and Apple have not commented on whether or not they will comply with requests and it is unknown what actions Roskomnadzor can take if they refuse to remove the apps. Even if the giant US corporations acquiesce to Russia’s wishes, users are likely to find ways around the restrictions.

“[Despite the bans] Telegram has remained accessible to most Russian Internet users by utilizing a variety of circumvention tricks,” says Meduza.

According to the messaging service, its app has at least 15 million users in Russia, and 10 million open the app daily. It is third only to WhatsApp (25 million users) and Viber (21 million).

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That's insanity.

On a related note, what are the chances of blocking global satellite internet like the one SpaceX will try to built? Would national governments like China or Russia have the ability to censor it? Since all traffic could be routed satellite to satellite until ground based station on foreign soil is reached, there's little they could do.

The only things that come to my mind is not granting licence to transmit on particular wavelengths used by the service or making devices capable of receiving that signal illegal. but both seem like all or nothing approaches not likely to succeed. What am I missing?
 
Strange that an article covering this topic wouldn't mention that Amazon and Google just started banning "Domain Fronting".
Seems pretty relevant to the subject.
 
Not sure how it's possible to actually ban a VPN. ExpressVPN, which I use, has thousands of servers around the world. Can a single government block all of them?
 
Lol these guys like playing these cat and mouse games with the internet and always lose in the end.
 
Not sure how it's possible to actually ban a VPN. ExpressVPN, which I use, has thousands of servers around the world. Can a single government block all of them?

they can block them by Ip Address ranges, domain name, Layer 7 Application signature....It's possible.
 
Just block and ban internet in general and make own "better" version of online interaction. I don't get why they use normal internet if they want absolute control. I would also make closed phone platform, android and apple will never be totally in the control of the russian government so they should make their own. It could be based on android but I don't get why they would want to support stores based in US, they could finance some of the spying with government owned app store. I just see no reason to use these US based platforms, especially when all they do is complain.
 
Poor Putin .... is he afraid somebody will say something unflattering about him?

Hes not afraid, he just don't want to waste time killing people. He seems insane enough to not be afraid, ever. Everything that he doesn't agree with is propaganda, just like with Trump but Trump is a ***** and has no power to kill anyone. I bet Putin (just like Trump) really believes what he say is true and best for the country, it's a shame our leaders are insane.
 
Strange that an article covering this topic wouldn't mention that Amazon and Google just started banning "Domain Fronting".
Seems pretty relevant to the subject.

Telegram doesn't use domain fronting to my knowledge. That trick only works against Signal.
 
Just block and ban internet in general and make own "better" version of online interaction. I don't get why they use normal internet if they want absolute control. I would also make closed phone platform, android and apple will never be totally in the control of the russian government so they should make their own. It could be based on android but I don't get why they would want to support stores based in US, they could finance some of the spying with government owned app store. I just see no reason to use these US based platforms, especially when all they do is complain.


That's the same as cutting yourself off from the worlds economic system. China is barely able to do it, because of it's size, and even then they have to make a lot of concessions. Russia is in a far worse position. Their economy is based on natural resources. You need access to cutting edge technology to extract it economically. If Russia doesn't play ball, no trillion dollar contracts with Shell. No access to specialized equipment and technology, no access to worlds banking, etc. The cost of isolating yourself and creating your own internet is stupendous. Especially when your regime is based on content people, and access to internet is not insignificant part of it.
 
Blocking people's freedom of knowledge and speech is a classic element of a dictatorship.
The new Russian generation is still living their parents' slave mentality.
Some of them are actually proud of the leader's quest to return Russia to its imperial glory and consider this type of dictatorship to be a part of the old Russian power.
Memory is such a frail thing. Ask the Germans about it...
 
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Not sure how it's possible to actually ban a VPN. ExpressVPN, which I use, has thousands of servers around the world. Can a single government block all of them?
Yes, in that case that VPN service will have to update/change the aerver ip addresses more frequently.
 
Not sure how it's possible to actually ban a VPN. ExpressVPN, which I use, has thousands of servers around the world. Can a single government block all of them?

I am a frequent traveler, and you'd be surprised how much effort they put into blocking.

I also work in many schitholes, like China, Venezuela, Panama, Myanmar, Saudi, to name a few, though I've not yet had the 'pleasure' of Russia in 20 years of traveling.

The efforts by the Saudi's and the Chinese top it all though.

My paid-for VPNs (I've had a few) worked about 50% of the time, especially in China.

Since they literally block so much, it really is like the internet is 'broken'. Even our own parts listing server is blocked, and that interferes with work. In Saudi, some of Youtube worked, but in China, forget it.

I left Beijing two weeks ago, and I'll be in HK this week, which is nowhere near as bad.

My recommendation, if you know what you are doing, is to run your own VPN back to your own address / etc, and remote to that, so you can do your banking, search for something, etc.

After some time in China, you will never know the value of Google, until it is taken from you. They blocked my https://startpage.com after 2 days.... and it never worked again in China. So they are really watching, and on top of everything internet-based.

What commies hate most - is exposure.

Like in the 80's when they were confiscating 'Dallas' VHS tapes into Russia etc. Ha ha hah a hah a hah, or satellite dishes in the Eastern Block.

And ha.
 
That's insanity.

On a related note, what are the chances of blocking global satellite internet like the one SpaceX will try to built? Would national governments like China or Russia have the ability to censor it? Since all traffic could be routed satellite to satellite until ground based station on foreign soil is reached, there's little they could do.

The only things that come to my mind is not granting licence to transmit on particular wavelengths used by the service or making devices capable of receiving that signal illegal. but both seem like all or nothing approaches not likely to succeed. What am I missing?

Satellites use radio waves, and can be interfered with.

An example:

http://www.spiegel.de/international...-signals-carrying-foreign-media-a-686670.html

Please read the story, you may find it interesting.
 
That's insanity.

On a related note, what are the chances of blocking global satellite internet like the one SpaceX will try to built? Would national governments like China or Russia have the ability to censor it? Since all traffic could be routed satellite to satellite until ground based station on foreign soil is reached, there's little they could do.

The only things that come to my mind is not granting licence to transmit on particular wavelengths used by the service or making devices capable of receiving that signal illegal. but both seem like all or nothing approaches not likely to succeed. What am I missing?

To make everyone understand each others on the internet we use protocols such as IPV4 and IPV6 mostly through ethernet networks.

It doesn't matter what the medium is (can be wave radio, transatlantic cable, or satellite in that case, ...).

We always transport IP packets, it allows any organisation (government, ISPs, hosted services such as Facebook, even you at home) to control what comes in and what comes out.

unless you are owning 100% of the whole network infrastructure you can't predict how an organisation will treat a packet.
 
Satellites use radio waves, and can be interfered with.

An example:

http://www.spiegel.de/international...-signals-carrying-foreign-media-a-686670.html

Please read the story, you may find it interesting.

Thanks that's really interesting. But I wonder how it changes when it's not just one geostationary satellite, but dozens at a time, out of thousands in non stationary low earth orbit. And what if they transmit in multiple frequencies? Can they really track and block them all? And from what I gathered from the article, it wasn't really destructive interference, but a quirk of that particular satellite's uplink technology, where it automatically picked up the stronger signal, I.e. something differently designed satellites could handle.
 
To make everyone understand each others on the internet we use protocols such as IPV4 and IPV6 mostly through ethernet networks.

It doesn't matter what the medium is (can be wave radio, transatlantic cable, or satellite in that case, ...).

We always transport IP packets, it allows any organisation (government, ISPs, hosted services such as Facebook, even you at home) to control what comes in and what comes out.

unless you are owning 100% of the whole network infrastructure you can't predict how an organisation will treat a packet.

But it does matter. If ground station is in S. Korea, how is China able to control it? Or Finland and St.Petersburg/Moscow? Sure they can listen in on the packets beamed down (although what good it does you their content is encrypted and you have no way to prioritize with one to try to decrypt), but they can't really change them if none of the infrastructure apart from the receiver in individuals hand is in their control.
 
Thanks that's really interesting. But I wonder how it changes when it's not just one geostationary satellite, but dozens at a time, out of thousands in non stationary low earth orbit. And what if they transmit in multiple frequencies? Can they really track and block them all? And from what I gathered from the article, it wasn't really destructive interference, but a quirk of that particular satellite's uplink technology, where it automatically picked up the stronger signal, I.e. something differently designed satellites could handle.

Regarless of its desire to choose the strongest signal, such as wifi does, blast any receiving antenna with a large enough broadband signal, and you'll snuff out its ability to receive any *wanted* narrow-band signal.
 
To make everyone understand each others on the internet we use protocols such as IPV4 and IPV6 mostly through ethernet networks.

It doesn't matter what the medium is (can be wave radio, transatlantic cable, or satellite in that case, ...).

We always transport IP packets, it allows any organisation (government, ISPs, hosted services such as Facebook, even you at home) to control what comes in and what comes out.

unless you are owning 100% of the whole network infrastructure you can't predict how an organisation will treat a packet.

Hello from the Submarine Cable Industry...

Quote: "We always transport IP packets, it allows any organisation (government, ISPs, hosted services such as Facebook, even you at home) to control what comes in and what comes out."

No Sir, we definately do NOT always transport IP, most of the existing infrastructure, country to country, is SDH/SONET. We've been moving to more and more IP over the past 8yrs, but many ATM networks remain. In fact, I have still have to test for SDH patterns (as well as OTN), as I commission each new network or network upgrade - save for the network I did last week. This was the first time in 20 years I've not had a customer request for SDH frame testing.

The smart net admins still deploy SDH, for security reasons. Less people know what to do with that. They likely still feed the router end-points IP, but the carrier will be SDH. Ethernet is wildly understood, spoofed, redirected, exploited, etc, you see.
 
Hello from the Submarine Cable Industry...

Quote: "We always transport IP packets, it allows any organisation (government, ISPs, hosted services such as Facebook, even you at home) to control what comes in and what comes out."

No Sir, we definately do NOT always transport IP, most of the existing infrastructure, country to country, is SDH/SONET. We've been moving to more and more IP over the past 8yrs, but many ATM networks remain. In fact, I have still have to test for SDH patterns (as well as OTN), as I commission each new network or network upgrade - save for the network I did last week. This was the first time in 20 years I've not had a customer request for SDH frame testing.

The smart net admins still deploy SDH, for security reasons. Less people know what to do with that. They likely still feed the router end-points IP, but the carrier will be SDH. Ethernet is wildly understood, spoofed, redirected, exploited, etc, you see.

hum, you are talking about level 1 and 2 of OSI model technologies "SDH/SONET , ATM"
IPV4 and IPV6 are layer 3. I don't understand why those technologies could not fit with IP
I read that PoS (Packet over SONET) was what would allow ip packets to flow over those kinds of network (wikipedia). Can you confirm that ?

and apparently PoS is widely use on SONET/SDH infrastructures. (does not surprise me)
maybe I'm wrong but you can't exist on the internet without IP packets involve (BTW Internet Protocol)

So yeah not every transmission actors in the world manipulate IP but you can still transport it.
either you transport IP and you are part of the internet or you don't and you are not part of it.

We are talking about the possibilities to reach an INTERNET service when it doesn't seems to be reachable due to blocking.

I tried to be simple there so yeah I talk about IPV4 and IPV6 only, which is what people care about when they try to reach a service like "Telegram" and not trying to cumunicate with a satellite near pluton to recover the pictures of it.
 
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