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1308 points rickybule | 31 comments | | HN request time: 1.708s | source | bottom

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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_verandaguy ◴[] No.45055604[source]
Hello! I've got experience working on censorship circumvention for a major VPN provider (in the early 2020s).

- First things first, you have to get your hands on actual VPN software and configs. Many providers who are aware of VPN censorship and cater to these locales distribute their VPNs through hard-to-block channels and in obfuscated packages. S3 is a popular option but by no means the only one, and some VPN providers partner with local orgs who can figure out the safest and most efficient ways to distribute a VPN package in countries at risk of censorship or undergoing censorship.

- Once you've got the software, you should try to use it with an obfuscation layer.

Obfs4proxy is a popular tool here, and relies on a pre-shared key to make traffic look like nothing special. IIRC it also hides the VPN handshake. This isn't a perfectly secure model, but it's good enough to defeat most DPI setups.

Another option is Shapeshifter, from Operator (https://github.com/OperatorFoundation). Or, in general, anything that uses pluggable transports. While it's a niche technology, it's quite useful in your case.

In both cases, the VPN provider must provide support for these protocols.

- The toughest step long term is not getting caught using a VPN. By its nature, long-term statistical analysis will often reveal a VPN connection regardless of obfuscation and masking (and this approach can be cheaper to support than DPI by a state actor). I don't know the situation on the ground in Indonesia, so I won't speculate about what the best way to avoid this would be, long-term.

I will endorse Mullvad as a trustworthy and technically competent VPN provider in this niche (n.b., I do not work for them, nor have I worked for them; they were a competitor to my employer and we always respected their approach to the space).

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teeray ◴[] No.45056673[source]
> First things first, you have to get your hands on actual VPN software and configs.

It would be nice if one of the big shortwave operators could datacast these packages to the world as a public service.

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1. ianburrell ◴[] No.45058196[source]
There isn't enough bandwidth in HF to transmit data. Digital HF audio is 20 kHz wide so maybe 50kbps. The entire HF band is only 3-30 MHz.
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2. transcriptase ◴[] No.45058527[source]
Wait until you find out what people used to do with phone lines!
replies(1): >>45058720 #
3. zack6849 ◴[] No.45058633[source]
sure there is, you can send files over HF, it may not be FAST, but once you get it into the country, you can just copy the file with a faster method (eg: usb drive), WINLINK supports attachments, so you could absolutely send these files over HF
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4. smallnamespace ◴[] No.45058717[source]
If you're going to be using USB drives anyway, then using them to move files into the country would be faster.
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5. ◴[] No.45058720[source]
6. nine_k ◴[] No.45058956{3}[source]
More dangerous though. You'd need something like truecrypt, too.
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7. tzs ◴[] No.45059168[source]
50 kb/s x 1000 bits/kb x 3600 s/hr x 24 hr/day x 1 byte/8 bits x 1 MB / 1000000 bytes = 540 MB/day. That's enough to download VPN software and a Linux distribution to run it on in a day.

If you've already got a Linux system, the Debian openvpn package is under 1 MB and at 50 kb/s would take under 3 minutes to download. I don't know if openvpn in particular is suitable for people who are trying to evade their government, but would whatever features it is missing add substantially more size?

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8. jdkdbrnrnrb ◴[] No.45059217[source]
You never used dialup did you?
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9. kingforaday ◴[] No.45059337{3}[source]
zmodem to the rescue!
10. youainti ◴[] No.45059840{4}[source]
btw, veracrypt is the name if the follow up project. truecrypt shut down over a decade ago rather abruptly, so anything labeled truecrypt today is suspect as either out of date or potential malware.
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11. ◴[] No.45059946[source]
12. mrdomino- ◴[] No.45060048[source]
Yeah, you could use forward error correction too, so any n bits would be enough to reconstruct the input.

Of course then you get into needing software to decode the more advanced encodings; maybe start with a voice transmission explaining in plain language how to decode the first layer, which gives you a program that can decode the second layer, or something.

Starting to sound like an interesting project.

13. anonzzzies ◴[] No.45060165{3}[source]
300 baud. Was enough to download grainy porn pics. With a proper download tool that continues after hangups etc you can just leave it on for a week and I have when downloading software end 70s. No problem. Also via the airwaves: we had software via the radio every sunday. Works fine. Modern software is shitty large: it would be nice if a VPN provider would just release the driver and a cli which should not weigh over a mega (far less but outside mr Whitney i am not sure if that type of software dev still exists) for this type of transfer.
14. estimator7292 ◴[] No.45060220{4}[source]
Nah, just drop a few thousand 1GB flash drives from a plane. Load them with a tor browser, a wireguard client, and instructions on finding a remote exit. Only one copy needs to survive and it can spread very quickly and irreversibly by foot.
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15. jchook ◴[] No.45060418[source]
Wireguard ships with the Linux kernel so you only need to receive ~60 bytes of configuration information.
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16. ZaoLahma ◴[] No.45060566{5}[source]
Yeah, this is a great approach if you're already at war with a country.

If you're not and they're still allowing your planes to fly through their airspace then this is a great way to ensure that they lock your (and your friends') planes out.

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17. teiferer ◴[] No.45060584{3}[source]
The user-facing software is not included in the kernel, but you need that to configure wireguard.
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18. jchook ◴[] No.45061314{4}[source]
Is that true? I thought wg-quick etc were just convenience functions and that it's relatively trivial to use iproute2 to configure a VPN link
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19. GoblinSlayer ◴[] No.45061347[source]
Or just google drive.
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20. GJim ◴[] No.45061435{5}[source]
Plugging in a strange USB drive?

What could go wrong.

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21. ForOldHack ◴[] No.45062729{6}[source]
Would you like a short list, a long list or ...
22. cheeseomlit ◴[] No.45064077{5}[source]
Wasn't the conspiracy theory that truecrypt got shut down because it was 'too effective', and the successor projects presumably have intentional backdoors or something?
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23. immibis ◴[] No.45064972{3}[source]
Wireguard is also easily censored and is already censored in the places that censor VPNs.
24. pythonguython ◴[] No.45067499[source]
I’m not familiar with any HF comms channels other than military or broadcasting that get 20 kHz of bandwidth. Most HF modes get 3 kHz. You might be able to get 5 kbps at 3 kHz BW with some modern modes that can adapt to the frequency selective non stationary channel.
25. tzs ◴[] No.45068395{3}[source]
9600 bps dialup using the protocols commonly used back then such as ZMODEM could do file transfers at 3 MB/hour. That would be fine for grabbing VPN software.
26. rOOb85 ◴[] No.45076942{6}[source]
Truecrypt was likely developed by only 1 man, Paul le roux, who likely shut it down because he was on the run for being an international drug/human smuggler/cartel member. It’s kind of a crazy story.

But either way both truecrypt and veracrypt were independently audited and no major flaws were found. Not sure when the last veracrypt audit was done.

27. immibis ◴[] No.45077183{5}[source]
You don't need wg-quick. You do need the "wg" command.
28. immibis ◴[] No.45077186{3}[source]
Banned in places that ban VPNs.
29. chipsrafferty ◴[] No.45079668{6}[source]
Drop them from commercial planes via the toilet?
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30. daflip ◴[] No.45081003{7}[source]
When you flush the toilet in an airplane the contents is normally vacuumed in to a holding tank which gets emptied after the plane lands.
31. lormayna ◴[] No.45089948[source]
HF are really noisy. You need a lot of error correction to ensure that the package is consistent and without any error. This will drastically decrease the real bit rate.