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Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

1308 points rickybule | 5 comments | 28 Aug 25 16:43 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

Indonesia is currently in chaos. Earlier today, the government blocked access to Twitter & Discord knowing news spread mainly through those channels. Usually we can use Cloudflare's WARP to avoid it, but just today they blocked the access as well. What alternative should we use?
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cogman10 ◴[28 Aug 25 20:32 UTC] No.45056723[source]▶
IMO, the safest route for an individual with tech competency is to setup a small instance server in the cloud outside your country and use ssh port forwarding and a proxy to get at information you want.

For an example of a proxy service https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-...

That will give you a hard to snoop proxy service that should completely circumvent a government blockaid (they likely aren't going to be watching or blocking ssh traffic).

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1. asqueella ◴[28 Aug 25 21:20 UTC] No.45057166[source]▶
Advanced enough censors (who have DPI) do block or slow down ssh, e.g.: https://serverfault.com/questions/1122015/ssh-blockedfor-for...
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2. cogman10 ◴[29 Aug 25 02:39 UTC] No.45059462[source]▶
That's a pretty strict censorship that basically locks your digital infrastructure into your country.
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3. tsimionescu ◴[29 Aug 25 07:56 UTC] No.45061392[source]▶
Something that is often a benefit from the perspective of these regimes, yes.
4. asqueella ◴[29 Aug 25 09:08 UTC] No.45061855[source]▶
Well, mimicking China's GFW is seemingly the objective of some governments. But they are also able to allow some light (text-based) ssh usage and still prevent proxying.
5. Havoc ◴[29 Aug 25 13:19 UTC] No.45063755[source]▶
I guess that's where the slow down part comes in. I'd imagine you can slow SSH to a snails pace and it'll still work for basic CLI use