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Apple Pulls 60 VPNs from China App Store
- junkculture 9y agoChina : "Jump!" Apple : "How high?"
- romanovcode 9y agoOnly thing that concerns Apple is to make money. They don't have a moral ground on issues like these because they are a business. Don't tell us you would say "no".
- aluhut 9y agoSure I would. Chinese market is already dominated by Android. Only those with a lot of money can buy Apple and people with a lot of money have influence. I would love to see the party trying to come up with an excuse for their VIPs and their angry daughters for an Apple block.
- fma 9y agoThat is a misperception. You think Apple made so much money in China because only the rich but iPhones? Chinese people are willing to save/spend several months of their salary for the newest iPhone due to its status symbol. If anything will add to the further downfall of Apple in China, it stripping functionality of the most popular mobile payment app in China. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-19/tencent-s-wechat-abolishes-tipping-feature-on-apple-iphones https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-19/tencent-s...
- aluhut 9y agoSo this is part of a Chinese Government strategy to get Apple out of the market? Even more reasons to not do it. If Chinese Government decided they want you out, you will be out. Why not take some advertisement with them for the rest of the world? They surely knew how that works with the FBI problem.
- IBM 9y agoThey absolutely stake out moral positions on issues like these all the time. The difference is they only do it in the West where rule of law prevails and they can actually exert influence. They've done it with various anti-LGBT efforts that have taken place around the US, they've done it with the fight with the FBI and they're doing it right now in Australia [1], among others. What they don't do is shoot themselves in the head in some misguided attempt at ideological purity. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/20/apple-talks-australian-government-encryption/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/20/apple-talks-australian-...
- veidr 9y agoSpeak for yourself, dude. I would say "no". Tons of us would say "no". There are various things on this spectrum that any business can choose to do, or not do: use child labor, use political prison labor, dump toxic waste in public streams and rivers (after funding lobbyists to make it legal), etc.
- gthbdk 9y agoAnother hard 'no' here. There's a even strong chance I'd actively hamper company operations surrounding the project, and bust out psychological warfare on management until fired.
- justadeveloper2 9y agoMe too. The point about Apple is that they are abetting human rights violations. The Chinese treat their people like animals.
- saimiam 9y agoThis is just crazy talk @ The Chinese treat their people like animals. Millions lifted out of poverty. Nationalistic fervor. Chinese tourists traveling abroad (shows affluence.) I'm no China apologist but we could do with less grandstanding overall.
- zhte415 9y ago>The Chinese treat their people like animals. The Chinese are the People, that's the point. Socialism. That's the definition of socialism. The way you phrase 'The Chinese treat their people' is what socialism exists to fight against... or that's the ideological angle... You cannot confuse nation, nationality, and identity for mainland China. They're rolled into one, which is perfect for the current hegemony.
- kryptiskt 9y agoEven simpler, they could just allow sideloading of apps so they don't have to be the gatekeeper defending China's interests.
- pjmlp 9y agoActually those silly trainings that most of us have to do at companies of similar size about company culture say exactly that, that it is preferable to lose a business than do immoral stuff. Of course no one takes them seriously, because the actual reality on the field is that nothing other than profits matter.
- justadeveloper2 9y agoOh, I see, they only take on "moral" issues when it comes to the US elections? Companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook can sway the world right into totalitarianism via their support of censorship and disregard for basic human rights. If these companies do side with the least common denominator, where does that leave the rest of us?
- jpatokal 9y agoGoogle does not censor search results in China and consequently remains largely blocked there to this day.
- pilif 9y agowhat would be the option? Leaving the Chinese market, having iPhones be pulled from the market and the AppStore blocked by the Great Firewall? Even without VPN clients, iPhones still provide superior client-side security to a lot of other phones out there.
- raarts 9y agoEvery business has to follow local law. Same holds for Chinese companies doing business in the US.
- veidr 9y agoEvery business has to follow local law. Same held for companies doing business with South Africa under apartheid rule in the 1980s. Pretending there isn't a moral dimension to it just because "it's business" is absurd.
- taneq 9y agoSo you'd have Apple do what? Fall on their sword and pull out of China? Or actually go to war against the Chinese government?
- teknologist 9y agoI don't know about you but I certainly respect Google a lot more for doing that
- zhte415 9y ago> Every business has to follow local law. To a degree. Every business has to follow the law of their head office and umbrella group. When local law is inconsistent with head office law, then a grey area is entered. If this grey area is not reconcilable, then head office wins and local office capitulates or shuts down if pushed to that extent.
- lostboys67 9y agoDidn't stop huawei pirating ios did it
- Shivetya 9y agoAll companies jump when the country they are in tells them too. At most we can complain during Apple share holder meetings of our displeasure for them to do business in a country whose activities we do not agree with. There are far greater transgressions happening in other countries than blocking VPN but where is the concern for sales within them? Lastly, we don't have the right to tell China what is right for China. We can say we don't agree but similarly do we listen to China when they tell us what they don't like?
- lostboys67 9y agoSo shooting protesting students is ok then at some point a higher law (to quote William H. Seward) takes over
- humanrebar 9y ago> ...do we listen to China when they tell us what they don't like? If they have good points, yeah. Grading ideas based on the source is a good way to stay ignorant.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vdchuyen 9y agoHaha, because Google had just say "NO", I don't think this is a smart move for Apple. It seems that the DPI backends of Great Firewall were just overloaded.
- the-dude 9y agoThis comment has no substance and is essentially flamebait.
- veidr 9y agoReally? To me it sounds more like an abbreviated way to say: "Despite their polished 'Designed in California' efforts to strike a tone that resonates with the affluent organic free-range eco-democratic westcoast set, when the rubber hits the road, Apple kowtows to authoritarian despots if the profits are 'iphone-scale'." Does that also sound like flamebait to you? If so, then I suggest you introspect about where and why your fires burn.
- junkculture 9y agoExactly
- junkculture 9y agoI'm sorry you're taking it that way. Did Apple cooperate with the FBI when they asked to help with the Pulse Club terrorist? No.
- pestrov 9y agoSeems like something similar would happen in Russia this Fall too. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-internet-idUSKBN1AF0QI?il=0 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-internet-idUSKBN1A...
- loceng 9y agoHasn't Russia been trying to buddy up with China? And Turkey and the Philippines are going through interesting transitions as well.
- Piccollo 9y agoGoogle Play Store is also not usable in China without VPN
- unstatusthequo 9y agoIt's fine, the Chinese piracy apps will continue to support freedom of information. </snark> The irony of that is alarming.
- _pmf_ 9y ago"Where we're going, you'll need no VPN!" (spoiler: it's an internment camp)
- onewhonknocks 9y agoWhat is their alternative?
- davotoula 9y agoAsking for a friend?
- sangnoir 9y agoAsk Google[1]. 1. Google complied with the China's censorship laws for a while, but since no good deed goes unpunished - they got hacked by China. Only afterwards did they decide to leave the Chinese market altogether and no longer censor their Chinese results. They do get blocked now, from time to time (or depending on keyword, I forget).
- AlexGizis 9y agoSpeedify got pulled Saturday morning: "your application will be removed from the China App Store because it includes content that is illegal in China, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines: 5. Legal"
- AlexGizis 9y agoSpeedify got pulled Saturday morning: "your application will be removed from the China App Store because it includes content that is illegal in China, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines: 5. Legal"
- duncan_bayne 9y agohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R706isyDrqI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R706isyDrqI Perhaps someone should show Tim Cook.
- vincnetas 9y agossh -D 12345 infidel@secret-server.com
- zserge 9y agoUnfortunately, this method has been blocked years ago. Well, not blocked completely, but the speed slows down to zero (packet loss grows up to 100%) within a couple of minutes making it practically unusable.
- dlb_ 9y agoIs normal SSH blocked too? How can they determine that the SSH is used as a tunnel?
- simias 9y agoIt's trivial to detect SSH connections if you do deep packet inspection. Doing it for all connections and even on non-standard ports would require a significant amount of power however. That might not be a problem for the chinese government.
- tempay 9y agoIt's possible to detect even if the packets can't be decrypted (there are commercially available solutions for corporate firewalls as well). This post gives some interesting insight into some of their blocking capabilities.[1] [1] http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great-firewall-of-china/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great-firewal...
- bspammer 9y agoCan anyone in China confirm if the solution in this article (padding the packets to random lengths) still works? I'm heading out to China later this year and it would be nice to have this as a backup if my VPN doesn't work.
- new2424141 9y agodoes stunnel over openvpn bypass the GFW ?
- 4ad 9y agoWhat exactly is a "VPN app" for iOS? How does it work? I was under the impression that iOS natively supports VPNs through IPsec (and perhaps a few other technologies), and that it doesn't have tap/tun devices, nor it allows installing kernel drivers to create tap/tun devices so you could not use e.g. OpenVPN. So what do these VPN apps actually do? Are they just a front-end for some service, but the phone still uses IPsec? If that is the case I assume you can configure IPsec manually? Can someone explain? A link to some technical document would be amazing. Thank you!
- aphextron 9y agoMost are essentially just a UIWebview with preconfigured https proxy
- 4ad 9y agoThat sounds... awful, the name "VPN" doesn't really apply.
- Terretta 9y agoWhich is why that’s not the case. iOS supports real VPN: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201533 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201533 The legit apps are mostly VPN policy/configuration managers. You give them permission to hook into the built in consumer and business level VPN capabilities built into iOS without giving them ability to MITM all the traffic on the device. Mostly the apps give you tools to select the edge / country you want to connect to, whether you want DNS ad blocking, and a way to use App Store subscriptions to pay for VPN. They can also give you easy on/off 3D Touch or widgets, or show you dashboards of usage. You can use an app to create a VPN profile then remove the app, it’s not needed. You can also load VPN profiles other ways, without an app.
- 4ad 9y agoThanks for the explanation, and the link!
- 9y ago
- halfelf 9y agoVery sad. Though I have an alternative apple account outside CN, prepared for this long time ago, it still brings me some inconvenience. These days you can't trust any mega corp, they will eventually store our (Chinese citizen's) data in CN. Another explanation is the upcoming 19th National Congress of CCP. Recently many policies have been published to restrict freedom of speech, indicating the leader now might desire another 5 year presidency.
- abhi3 9y ago>indicating the leader now might desire another 5 year presidency. Might? The consensus outside China seems to be that another term is a forgone conclusion
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- epynonymous 9y agoi can still download vpn clients from the us apple store from china, it's not a big deal, thus far, though annoying.
- bmelton 9y agoThe assertion made on NPR this morning was that it was likely that the 'approved' VPN clients that remain on the App Store are likely to have backdoors to the state. I have no knowledge on that, so if that's an absurd assertion, please feel free to let me know.
- strictnein 9y agoThe VPN clients in the US app store have backdoors for Chinese access? This seems unlikely.
- paradite 9y agoCan't find any NPR news on that except this old story that mentioned nothing related to backdoor or approved VPN: http://www.npr.org/tags/540281875/vpn http://www.npr.org/tags/540281875/vpn Any links?
- bmelton 9y agoIt was the radio Q&A segment. The speaker had a British accent, but I don't recall the name.
- sumanthvepa 9y agoJust out of curiosity, how do businesses in China that have remote offices secure their communication? It must be hard without VPNs.
- Yeri 9y agoAs far as I have been able to figure out and remember from my time in China... Businesses are technically allowed to have VPNs. China still relies on foreign companies and a lot of Chinese companies rely on for example adwords to promote their business outside of CN. (this doesn't mean it's uncommon for CN to try to hack into these VPN tunnels, but the goal is not blocking access, and more about corporate espionage). The Great Firewall also operates on a (customer) ISP level (rules and DPI varies per ISP and city) and not so much on outgoing traffic. Most western companies rent fiber directly that is not affected by the GFW. For example I know they could easily spot OpenVPN traffic and send RST packets to the host (also any DNS request with vpn is often send to a honeypot). IPsec had better chances of success (perhaps because that was less common?). The VPN (and information control) targets mostly local Chinese. They don't care too much about tourists (collateral damage).
- devy 9y agoWhen I travel there I noticed that if I am roaming on the mobile network (with U.S. carrier SIM card but service provided via China Unicom), Facebook was accessible, do you know why?
- TorKlingberg 9y agoYou data is routed as phone network data to your U.S. carrier, who has the gateway to the internet. This is because mobile data protocols were originally not designed with the Internet in mind, but as a separate network. The internet gateways were added on later.
- ethbro 9y agoIf the only way to get a VPN license is to have it attached to a business license, then control over entities with a VPN is a lot easier. What they're presumably trying to prevent is anonymous VPNs (in that the client is unknown).
- Severian 9y agoSo does the Great Firewall do deep packet inspection? I take it that it does, and blocks any protocols that it detects that allow tunneling/traversing the firewall. What if there was a method of changing the standard data formats to be randomized based on one time authorization codes? So your SSH/SSL/L2TP/etc was mangled around to something corresponding to a one time auth function. Basically pre-encrypting or obfuscating to avoid the deep packet inspection.
- robert_foss 9y agoHave a look into the arms race between the Tor project and the Great Firewall of China.
- yoran 9y agoRelated to this, this an interesting paper that clarifies how the Great Firewall discovers Tor nodes by doing active probing: https://nymity.ch/active-probing/imc2015.pdf https://nymity.ch/active-probing/imc2015.pdf. No deep packet inspection is necessary when you pretend to be a Tor user and can identify the typical response for a Tor node.
- swiley 9y agoPerhaps this could be defended against by probabilistic connection rejection?
- ethbro 9y agoFor anyone in on this, would be absolutely fascinated by any good, recent(ish) links where this is documented or discussed. And hats off to the Tor people and all the good work they're doing there.
- KGIII 9y agoWhen you have the data about a lot of normal traffic, you can easily spot the abnormal traffic. Then, slow it down or stop it. False positives aren't a huge priority, I don't imagine.
- emsy 9y agoIt sucks that you can't simply sideload apps like with Android (it is possible but has many restrictions). That's my main gripe with iOS. Without Apple's servers your device is virtually useless. Apple pulling those apps would be a non-issue.
- shimfish 9y agoAs a developer who makes a living charging for apps, it's wonderful that you can't simply sideload apps like with Android.
- amirmc 9y agoI think the above comment is somewhat orthogonal to getting paid. The issue is that the Apple App Store is the only marketplace (realistically). For example, I try to avoid the Mac App Store and buy/download direct from the vendor, where possible. I can't do that on iOS.
- brady747 9y agoNow, if china makes them pull shadowsocks(R) clients from the apple/app/itunes store...then we'll know they are serious. Sorry for all the vpners in china on apple, at least you can go get a cheap android device in china and monkey around and patch together a mobile vpn based solution of some sort.
- wuxb 9y agoOKay. Make China North Korea. #MCNK
- merricksb 9y agoExtensively discussed 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14880659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14880659