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1309 points rickybule | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.221s | 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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_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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77pt77 ◴[] No.45057400[source]
Obfs4proxy and Shapeshifter are an absolute PITA to install.

Get your own VPS server (VPS in EU/US with 2GB of ram, 40GB of disk space and TBs/month of traffic go for $10 a year, it's that cheap). Never get anything in the UK and even USA is weird. I'd stick with EU.

Install your software (wireguard + obsfuscation or even tailscale with your own DERP server)

Another simpler alternative is just `ssh -D port` and use it as a SOCKS server. It's usually not blocked but very obvious.

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extraduder_ire ◴[] No.45057887[source]
Where are you finding a VPS in the EU for $10/year? Any I've seen are about 5-6 times that much.
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1. 77pt77 ◴[] No.45059365[source]
https://billing.chunkserve.com/cart.php?a=confproduct&i=0

https://my.servitro.com/cart.php?a=view

https://manager.ouiheberg.com/cart.php?a=confproduct&i=0

1GB or even 512MB and 10GB of storage is very easy and completely doable to use for a VPN + HTTPS server

Traffic is super cheap nowadays.

Your real issue will be IP reputation.

https://lowendtalk.com/categories/offers

Is a good source.