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China tightens Great Firewall by declaring unauthorised VPN services illegal
- kem 10y agoThis seems more ominous to me than it normally would... All this sort of thing worldwide makes me wonder why there isn't more of an exponential growth in movement to decentralized or federated platforms. It's definitely seen a lot of growth, but with concerns about centralized censorship and monitoring in various places, it seems like it should be getting more attention. Maybe it's irrelevant in the case of China, or maybe it's a good place to use as a thought experiment because censorship strategies have been played out so thoroughly there.
- csydas 10y agoProbably because in a lot of the places where this happens, the owners/operators of the infrastructure have to actually live there and deal with the consequences of undermining the powers that be. On top of that, sometimes it pays to play -- thereby be a human rights cost but there's a real payout whether it's monetary, accruing favor with the local powers, or just being able to operate. I think it's very easy to look at the state of the world and judge it to be an egregious violation of human rights, and the solution is simple. Implementing it, however, is complicated by external factors and always is in these situations.
- anardil 10y agoIt'll be interesting to see what new technologies develop to counteract these measures. Adversity fosters growth right?
- eganist 10y agoWould be interesting to see if Iridium finds a wealthy audience in China.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- reubeneli 10y agomany are using proxies instead in Hong Kong - like http://mediahint.com http://mediahint.com. Not sure about mainland. Any ideas what is used on the mainland?
- epynonymous 10y agoexpressvpn, astril, tian xing (local solution) cant open this article without vpn, but seems bad.
- voltagex_ 10y agoWell, at least MediaHint isn't joining users to a botnet like one of the others is. All it's doing is setting proxy autoconfig to https://mediahint.com/chrome.pac https://mediahint.com/chrome.pac Doing a bit more digging it seems like they're using several proxies under the name \*.mhgs.co, which looks suspiciously like a whole lot of Linode boxes. I didn't think the 'net was filtered in HK?
- dylz 10y agoLinode/DO boxes are probably frontending the first part of the proxy chain. The output is probably not going to be a Linode or DO IP at the end. Linode JP has decent routing to CN afaik.
- allenwong 10y agohttps://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/lang-chao-vpn/id1129666220?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/lang-chao-vpn/id1129666220?m...
- BoorishBears 10y agoIs something getting lost in translation or is this targeted at businesses and not individuals? (Still a big deal, but I thought VPNs were already banned?)
- kobayashi 10y agoI'm not sure about their legality over the years, but I do know that they were in fact largely accessible and were and extremely important avenue for academic researchers to engage with the broader community. This ban will likely disproportionally effect China's elites, who have long used VPNs for many reasons unrelated to politics.
- anonnyj 10y agoNot entirely sure, seemed banned, have vague memories of people being harassed for using proxies. In any case proxied have definitely been soft banned. If you try searching for vpn/proxy you'll get dead connections. If a url has the same, you'll also get a dead connection (as opposed to a "this is banned" page) Also perhaps of note... When a law isn't working (ie indoor smoking ban) they have been known to just re-issue it.
- chipperyman573 10y ago>Also perhaps of note... When a law isn't working (ie indoor smoking ban) they have been known to just re-issue it. This is interesting. Do they re-issue it with a minor change (double penalties, increasing the radius of "indoors" by 10ft, etc) or do they just re-issue it word for word?
- methou 10y agoI'm not sure about today, but at least a year ago, there's still a lot of small/private ISPs selling _private networks_ with _global_ internet access, the notice itself sounds like the Ministry is trying to reform the businesses like this. There's a good reason (other than censorship) to do so because the market is a real mess and most of the bandwidth used by them wasn't acquired from a _proper_ way.
- x2398dh1 10y ago> "No unauthorized use of VPNs through March 2018." I was wondering, "what just happened internally in China that they want to censor for a year or so?" Then it dawned on me...they want to censor everything until the 2018 Winter Olympics is over with. I was wondering if Trump had tweeted, "free Tibet," or something like that.
- amyjess 10y ago> I was wondering, "what just happened internally in China that they want to censor for a year or so?" I think, in general, they've observed the rise of populist movements in other countries and have decided they're not going to let that happen in China.
- lnanek2 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_National_Congress_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_National_Congress_of_the_...
- paradite 10y agoThis notice is something like a "campaign" in English, which starts now and lasts for one year until March 2018. The assumption here is that these issues would have been addressed by then. The timing March 2018 does not carry significant value here, it just means the campaign period is slightly longer than one year.
- PakG1 10y agoWhat would the 2018 Winter Olympics have anything to do with anything?
- ago 10y agoAt the 2008 Beijing summer olympics they actually reduced the censorship a little until the games were over.
- PakG1 10y agoBut 2018 Winter Olympics are in South Korea. Not sure if you thought Beijing was hosting 2018, or if you thought that Beijing ups the censors every Olympics each time. https://www.pyeongchang2018.com https://www.pyeongchang2018.com
- hota_mazi 10y agoAnd by "unauthorized", they mean "all".
- netheril96 10y agoI heard that Baidu and some other Internet companies in China have these kind of unfiltered connection (maybe to use Google? Haha). I don't if these are "authorized" or not.
- dilfish 10y agoThey are authorized. All companies has to apply this "specialized line" for Internet accessing. If there's anything they do not like, they could find the person responsible for this easily.
- BatFastard 10y agoWhen my daughter was in Beijing last year in school, virtually all of the U.S. students in her class used VPNs to access Youtube and other american content. I got the impression they were quite common amongst the Beijingers too.
- deepfriedbits 10y agoEvery hotel I've stayed at in China that caters to Westerners had a VPN in place. You could check your Gmail at the hotel but not outside of it (unless you had your own VPN).
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoOnly true in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, not any other city in china as far as I can tell.
- arcticbull 10y agoMy hotel in Shanghai last month had a VPN for guests too. The further you go inland the crazier the restrictions get.
- fooker 10y agoThis is because historically most Chinese revolts and movements started with the inlanders getting frustrated with the amount of trade the coast enjoys. People in Beijing and Shanghai have it much better and do not have much reason to cause problems bad for business.
- arcticbull 10y agoNot to mention Xinjiang. By the time I got out there communication was basically a black hole. Out there apparently the police were actually enforcing the no-VPN rule kicking locals off the internet for extended periods of time.
- deleted 10y ago
- deavmi 10y agoCrap communist China.
- rdlecler1 10y agoIt's very frustrating. I had a VPN but they were even blocking that. Thankfully I was able to access Google and Gmail while on international roaming with Verizon. We're certainly seeing a separation of internets.
- methou 10y agoLast time I was trying to `bootstrap` a new OS with my ownVPN, it's been quite difficult if without commercial services. Most materials you need for a brand new computer to freely surf the internet can't easily be found on the Chinternet, it's quite difficult to filter out the malware from a legit. They've given a quite (technically) reasonable timeline for this, so believe they are serious on this one. If they put punitive, even the slightest like cut the wire or urge your ISP to stop service.
- schuke 10y agoHere's my translation as a Chinese native, though I'm no technical expert. Companies that provide IDC, ISP, CDN services, without authorization, are prohibited to set up or lease connections (including virtual private networks), to conduct business operations across borders. I guess it means if you're a ISP etc, you're not allowed to sell VPN services without authorization. It says nothing about individuals purchasing VPN services from foreign providers. It's nonetheless a chilling sign that they're restricting VPN access, which is consistent with the overall tightening of internet control that's been going on for quite a while. It comes as no surprise though, given 2017 will see the Party's 19th national congress. A lot will happen to make sure the internet does absolutely nothing remotely similar to what happened in the Middle East in 2010.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- paradite 10y agoAs much as I hate regulations on Internet access, the title as of now is an inaccurate description of the regulations in terms of the target audience. I hope someone can summarize the translation above as a more accurate title.
- gutnor 10y ago> It's nonetheless a chilling sign that they're restricting VPN access, which is consistent with the overall tightening of internet control that's been going on for quite a while. It is also consistent with the worldwide tightening of internet. Trump and May are much more likely to applaud the latest Chinese effort than criticise. Chinese internet management is the model that will lead the West. Quite a reversal, quite depressing too.
- NTripleOne 10y ago"tightening" to us, perhaps. Loosening to them...
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoGood thing the Internet is under decentralised international control, then! …oh, right.
- intrasight 10y agoHow would they discriminate between business people traveling to China (who probably wouldn't travel if their VPN was blocked) vs Chinese citizens?
- yorwba 10y agoThe same way they do it currently. I'm in Shanghai as an exchange student and I get very different connection quality depending on whether I'm using the WLAN on campus (fast, some Google-owned services work even without VPN), using my mobile connection specifically catering to foreigners (4G, no noticeable slowdown with VPN) or the "citizen grade" connection at the flat I'm renting. I have observed speeds of 10 MiB/s connecting to servers on campus, but VPN is usually capped at 10 KiB/s. Ironically, I was downloading a YouTube video overnight (using a VPN, of course) and after midnight the speed skyrocketed to breathtaking 200 KiB/s! No idea whether that has anything to do with this announcement.
- paradite 10y agoCurious if you are in NYU Shanghai? I think that's the only campus in China where you get unfiltered Internet.
- yorwba 10y agoNo, SJTU. Internet access is not completely unfiltered, just less filtered than outside.
- intrasight 10y agoReally that's what I'm asking - how do they do it currently?
- Canada 10y agoEnd user access starts in a provincial/regional network, which is connected to a national "backbone", which maybe allows the traffic out of the country. In my experience there's massive packet loss between the province and "backbone". 40% loss is regular throughout the day. Stuff within China mostly works, but anything outside is flaky at best. Now obviously enterprise can't put up with that crap, so there's better routes out. Say a datacenter in Guangdong province that has direct peering with Hong Kong where licensed companies are colocating. Those companies with access can take money, (or under the table their sysadmins can) to terminate a VPN or MPLS connection there, giving unfiltered access to the internet and bypassing the lossy path. The going rate I've found for this is about USD $300 per megabit per month, plus whatever the costs are to get there. (eg. Your regular broadband connection if using a VPN or cost of MPLS/Lan extension type service from the telco) Too expensive for most individuals, but definitely worth it if you're a hotel catering to foreign guests who will be pissed off if Google, Facebook, and pretty much everything they recognize about the internet doesn't work. In my view this document is calling for, among other things, rooting out of this kind of activity. If anyone is familiar with this market for unfiltered internet in China I'd like to learn more about it.
- brador 10y ago$300 per megabit?? Did you mean GB or TB maybe?
- est 10y agoActually, this is not new, it's only an attempt to enforce a regulation dates back to 2002 Official content link: http://www.miit.gov.cn/n1146295/n1146557/n1146624/c3554573/content.html http://www.miit.gov.cn/n1146295/n1146557/n1146624/c3554573/c... Side-by-side translation provided by Peking Univ. (partially pay-walled) http://www.lawinfochina.com/display.aspx?id=2407&lib=law http://www.lawinfochina.com/display.aspx?id=2407&lib=law Also, an interesting article in Chinese talking about the topic http://www.winlawfirm.com.cn/_d276432755.htm http://www.winlawfirm.com.cn/_d276432755.htm
- tbronchain 10y agoOriginal link http://www.leiphone.com/news/201701/zZyJrgzw4RkReuTJ.html http://www.leiphone.com/news/201701/zZyJrgzw4RkReuTJ.html (for those in china who don't have VPN ;) )
- shalmanese 10y agoLink should probably be changed to http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2064587/chinas-move-clean-vpns-and-strengthen-great-firewall http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/206... which provides a more digestible summary.
- thinkloop 10y agoVPNs have so many uses besides subverting censorship. How are off site workers supposed to connect to their intranets? Or individuals to secure public wifis, etc. Isn't VPN just an encrypted connection to another computer.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoIt is very difficult; e.g. Accessing Microsoft corpnet from behind the gfw. It kind of works, but isn't reliable.
- lend000 10y agoWell, at least they allow authorized use, so you can route your traffic directly into their most heavily monitored network analyzers if you so choose.
- tmikaeld 10y agoAbout a 6 months ago, all of our open VPN and softether VPNs was blocked, setting up new ones where blocked in 10 minutes. So we changed to shadowsock and it's been working since, it seems harder for them to detect.
- oszione 10y agoIndeed, Shadowsocks is great but it's just a socks5 proxy under the hood.
- cm2187 10y agoWhat about RDP into a remote VM? Surely they can't block RDP, techcos in China need to be able to run servers outside of China. Would that go around VPN restrictions?
- swiley 10y agoI know they used to use ssh tunneling a while ago, idk if they still do.
- Quarrelsome 10y agoSo what's the next logical step for users that wish to access restricted content should they not be able to use VPNs?
- hamckio 10y agoJust want to mention Streisand here; it's an opensource project that helps you to "setup a new server running L2TP/IPsec, OpenConnect, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, sslh, Stunnel, a Tor bridge, and WireGuard. It also generates custom instructions for all of these services. At the end of the run you are given an HTML file with instructions that can be shared with friends, family members, and fellow activists". Github here: https://github.com/jlund/streisand https://github.com/jlund/streisand
- lordlimecat 10y agoIt should be noted that the GFW currently has the ability to detect most or all of those. Long gone are the days when OpenVPN over TCP 443 could fool them.
- tiatia 10y agoYeah. This guy has obviously never lived in China.
- ommunist 10y agoChinese company Opera Software has VPN client built in developer version of Opera browser. I assume they have all the necessary licenses from the government and their software is safe to use from mainland China.
- toni 10y agoThis might sound like a naive or stupid question, so please help me out here: Let's say I live in Shenzhen. Isn't it possible to connect via a normal phone line to a dial-up service in Hong Kong and enjoy an almost uncensored (albeit very slow) internet? Or is that a bit far-fetched?
- robjan 10y agoIt would probably be quite expensive as, in most cases, calls to +852 are considered to be long-distance. I don't think internet access is as restricted in SZ as other parts of the mainland, as I am pretty sure that I bought an unrestricted SIM at the HK-SZ border last time I crossed.
- toni 10y agoYou are right that it will be very expensive. Thanks for the tip about buying an unrestricted SIM-card at the border with HK. Will the SIM-card also work in remote parts of China? Or is it only usable in Shenzhen?
- janekm 10y agoInternet access in SZ is also restricted, but you are right that you can buy an unrestricted SIM on the border, but that is actually a HK SIM (or dual network sim) so your data connections are terminated in HK and hence not filtered.
- EternalData 10y agoUgh, the general tightening of the Firewall will not have many short-term ramifications on the startup scene in China (it'll probably lead to a fair bit of protectionist lift actually for mainstream service providers) but the long-term issues of closeness will lead to inferior service providers thriving under the protection of the government. Regardless of the research dollars China is throwing at technology, this is no way to build a successful/enduring technology infrastructure.
- fangxing 10y agoAs a Chinese student，most of my friends（if he need visit blocked website）are using shadowsocks，it is easy 、fast and more stable than vpn，and I also installed shadowsocks in my openwrt router.