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Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram
- u04f061 9y agoInsane! Telegram is blocked in my country too but they didn't block millions of IPs I think to achieve that!
- y_molodtsov 9y agoAnd they also ordered Apple and Google to remove the app from their stores. I understand there are workarounds, but I'd really like them to respond with "f*ck yourself". It's a shame they won't do that, though.
- nrser 9y agoWhether they respond with process and patience or not, I’m hard pressed to think of powerful states that abide “f*ck yourself” once they’ve started to think national interest/security.
- patrickaljord 9y ago> they’ve started to think national interest/security More like Putin's interest/security.
- p2t2p 9y agoFinally! As a Russian who immigrated recently I’m endlessly tired of Russia this, Russia that. There is no Russia. There is Putin and Putin only.
- konart 9y agoPutin is just a face of FSB. You or they can remove him any time - nothing will change simply because of this.
- y_molodtsov 9y agoIt definitely change, although I can't say to which direction. He makes the system legitimate, so any successor would have either to be more open and earn some political trust in a normal process or just close the country even more (deploy martial laws, etc.)
- cornholio 9y agoAnd here is another yet problem with walled gardens. It creates a single failure point because Apple and Google are forced to comply with local law, regardless of how absurd it is, if they want to continue doing business there. In an open environment, you would simply change the mirror urls and run apt-get update.
- jstanley 9y agoThe Telegram client is available on F-Droid, so you can still use it even if you opt-out of the walled garden.
- BubuIIC 9y agoUnfortunately Telegram-FOSS from F-Droid doens't have GCM support so won't be notified about DC updates via push messages. I this particular case the centralization around the push service of google actually helps.
- pmlnr 9y agoDC updates via push messages? Isn't this what's DNS is for in the first place?
- madez 9y ago> I this particular case the centralization around the push service of google actually helps. No, it does not, and you even argued why. This centralization makes it harder to make the system more resilient. We need an alternative to GCM.
- BubuIIC 9y agoI'd argue that in this case the centralization helps because blocking GCM would kill all notifications for all apps. As long as they (Russia) are not willing to do that Telegram can use this as a side-channel to update their IPs for all clients. The other option would be for google to turn push notifications off selectively for Telegram and only in russia. Not sure if they can/will do that.
- ckastner 9y agoIf this is indeed a blanket banning of AWS and GCP, then I assume that Amazon and Google will soon remove Telegram. It might be immoral, but it's the fastest solution to the harm this causes to all other affected customers I can think of.
- SXX 9y agoSo do you think it's good idea for Amazon / Google reputation to cease their service to any SaaS if kremlin dont like it? Unlike many smaller players Telegram might actually afford to pay for even millions of new IPs in thousands of subnets.
- kuschku 9y agoWell, they've done it with others before, so it's kinda expected. And it also shows why relying on AWS or GCP is a horrible business decision.
- ckastner 9y ago> So do you think it's good idea for Amazon / Google reputation to cease their service to any SaaS if kremlin dont like it? No, but I don't think that's how it would be spun -- I would exect it to be framed as a ToS violation.
- SXX 9y agoI not sure how it's can be against ToS because unlike other case Telegram is actually large enough to actually pay for tens of thousands end point IPs easily even on monthly basis. And Kremlin minions certainly not going to stop ban subnets now even if will be 1:1000 ratio of Telegram's one and other services.
- golergka 9y agoAnd yet, Telegram is still working without a proxy or vpn.
- foka86 9y agonot everywhere, unfortunately. In my location it's almost impossible to use it without VPN. It also became difficult to send files through it.
- Double_a_92 9y agoYou can see here how russia has started to "burn": http://downdetector.com/status/telegram/map/ http://downdetector.com/status/telegram/map/ (However this might apply: https://www.xkcd.com/1138/ https://www.xkcd.com/1138/ )
- panarky 9y agoBig outages in Kyiv and Milan too? https://imgur.com/a/3biqq https://imgur.com/a/3biqq (These look like outliers even considering xkcd population density.)
- PunchTornado 9y agoSo what can telegram do if google and amazon bans them in Russia?
- shawabawa3 9y agoUse azure?
- linjus 9y agoSoon enough, every country will have their own internet. Until the new new internet appears
- cncrnd 9y agoAre you referring to Richard's new internet or Jian Yang's new new internet? Jian Yang's internet is based in China...
- xhruso00 9y agoDoes this mean that Google/Amazon customers on mentioned IP addresses are inaccessible? If so, I think Google/Amazon will choose to cease the contract with Telegram.
- SXX 9y agoJust in case previously when same thing happened with service called Zello and back then Amazon cease to provide them service (forbid to change IPs) before actual subnets were banned. Soon we'll see how Amazon / Google will react on Kremlin bullying this time.
- jeremyjh 9y agoIf they don't cancel Telegram's service, their other customers who are also being affected by the ban will flee to other services. I don't think they can sit and watch that happen.
- pmlnr 9y ago> will flee to other services That's not something you can do very fast, especially not from google's compute engine or AWS. Yes, eventually, they will, but that's a massive task for most companies.
- gonesilent 9y agoRussia is taking a page out of the China internet playbook. Next it will build out it's own great firewall and slowly unblock services after it gain's control.
- hux_ 9y agoThere the govt builds the controls. Here Twitter, YouTube and Facebook do. No big difference in my book. In terms of outcomes, only clowns get propped up either way.
- iggg 9y agoHow does Twitter YouTube etc block you from accessing the internet?
- dannyw 9y agoOh, there's a huge difference. You have alternatives.
- nukeop 9y agoThere is no alternative to Google, Amazon, Youtube, etc. You have tiny, inferior competitors that don't even come close to 10% of the monopolist's market share. Google works very hard to trap you in their ecosystem. Once you're there, escape is almost impossible.
- mjburgess 9y agoYes, in large part because their service is good. You're conflating legal restriction on individual behavior with market/individual-preference constraints. "Life" in general is constrained. We are not trying to get rid of limited options (every choise is between limited options), we're trying to limit totalitarian control over individuals. That is, behaviour which is artificially constrained by imprisonment, punishment and death for the sake of preserving tyrannical power structures.
- kome 9y agoAt Telegram their are pulling a troll move of epic proportions, much bigger than the troll move of the Russian government. Let's see what happens.
- 2close4comfort 9y agoHow long until all countries firewall off and whole reason for creating the internet is completely lost.
- pmlnr 9y agoNot much. We need mesh networks across every device - routers, smartphones, long distance repeaters, etc - ASAP to avoid it.
- rqs 9y agoSorry, it will not work. If your government can pass laws to allow themselves to block any Internet services, it may as well go ahead pass laws to prevent people from circumventing that block. So, the only defense you have, is to prevent your government from issuing the first law.
- p2t2p 9y agoProbably something like Fidonet model could be sustainable in this case.
- no_identd 9y agoGNUnet!
- StreamBright 9y agoUntil you create a true point to point channel between households without any corporate or government equipment, this is just a dream. Many people are mistaken about the internet, they think it cannot be easily filtered but this is not true at all. Every country has few major telcos that own the equipment where 100% of the internet traffic flows through. This is why banning IP ranges is super easy for them.
- y_molodtsov 9y agoUntil SpaceX launches its low-orbital fleet of internet satellites... That would be fun to watch.
- jankotek 9y agoHm, does that mean other IMs gave their encryption keys to Russian government? Also could someone from Russia confirm telegram/AWS are blocked?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- leo250 9y agoHello I’m from Russia. And yes, local authorities started blocking telegram IPs. It doesn’t work without proxy/vpn.
- fehyjn 9y agoTheir DPI is so dumb that it can be easily bypassed just by editing `Host` to `HOst` in http header. BTW ipv6 adresses are not blocked.
- icebraining 9y agoWait, assuming they're using TLS and certificate-pinning, the DPI shouldn't be able to read the HTTP headers at all. How does that work?
- fehyjn 9y agoThat’s right, but basically dpi sends tcp reset in case of https or 302 redirect in case of http before target server response, since it’s located nearer. There’s a tool to bypass this, so you can read more there. https://github.com/ValdikSS/GoodbyeDPI https://github.com/ValdikSS/GoodbyeDPI
- gbil 9y agoIf I'm not mistaken use of SNI reveals the target in plain text, big discussion these days with DNS over TLS etc.
- floatboth 9y ago
- lgl 9y agoA few months ago I read an article about Telegram and their related companies and individuals. [1] The article read like a mix between a nerdy James Bond story, a bad Law and Order episode, a Mexican soap opera and a Russian episode of Cribs. It was written by an ex-employee so I took it with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, the article brings up a lot of red flags and shady behavior. Combined with their (alleged) connection with the Russian government, roll-your-own-crypto and the recent >billion dollar ICO it doesn't really make me all that willing to use Telegram any time soon. [1] https://medium.com/@anton.rozenberg/pavel-durov-sued-senior-tech-lead-for-1-7-b24961dec503 https://medium.com/@anton.rozenberg/pavel-durov-sued-senior-...
- dijit 9y agoThis reads like FUD, there are reasons for and against telegram and I won't get into them here. But truth is often stranger than fiction[0] and there are actors with something to gain from making telegram look poor. [0]: The story of Karl Koch for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Koch_(hacker) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Koch_(hacker) who's death was ruled a suicide, and his history is... "colourful".
- fastball 9y agoIf you actually care about security/privacy, why not just use Signal?
- x220 9y agoSignal isn't anonymous. You need a phone number. Why did the all-knowing Moxie require this? No one has ever provided a good reason.
- falcolas 9y agoTo identify a particular user so you can send them messages? IIRC, Signal has never claimed to be anonymous. True anonymity in a messaging service is hard to achieve, and not even remotely user friendly.
- craigds 9y agoWhy block Telegram and not .. all the others? Whatsapp, Signal, Viber, ... Are they objecting to the use of encryption? Because everyone uses encryption almost all the time for everything everywhere. The cat has been well and truly released from that bag. Are they just going to turn off the internet altogether?
- pishpash 9y agoThat's what's going to happen. Various localities will shut off encrypted passageways altogether because they control the pipes. They will create a corporate-like intranet where they monitor everything.
- NullPrefix 9y agoSo basically like China?
- baq 9y agothey know how bad an open internet can hurt them because they do it themselves to other countries. can't blame them that they don't want to be on the receiving end of the weapon they created.
- realusername 9y agoIt's just that Telegram is the most used one in Russia so they proceed by targeting this one first but don't worry they will target the other ones after.
- konart 9y ago>Telegram is the most used one in Russia Not even close. Whatsapp and Viber are much more popular. Telegram was barely 3rd before the ban. [1] Viber moved their data to Russia, they won't get a ban. Not sure about Whatsapp. [1]: https://leonardo.osnova.io/bf345b20-423b-c508-cbc2-15963a7afea6/-/resize/560/-/quality/lightest/ https://leonardo.osnova.io/bf345b20-423b-c508-cbc2-15963a7af...
- kernelkadafi 9y agoIt may indicate where telegram is getting this 2 billion from in their ico, it may be intimatley connected to western establishment, specifically the Americans as we know their Jihadis/subversives are using the platform to coordinate their activities and soon wil have a way of sending funds across borders intergrated with their app of choice. China and Russia have clamped down on cryptos because of capital flight somthing that the west has used as a weapon to weaken Russia and China but which has largley been stamped out now. In my mind this now begs the question of Bitcoin, how exactly did it come around, who were the cypher punks working for, were they independent and their creation was coopted or were they 'guided' in their approach to a decentralised mechanism of capital flight, food for thought certainly....
- levleontiev 9y ago4.5M already.
- iaml 9y agoCorrect, they updated it 40 minutes ago.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dunkelheit 9y agoThe first round of the fight is clearly won by telegram - roscomnadzor is perceived as a lumbering and inept gorilla whose actions harm innocent bystanders while telegram continues to work almost perfectly. Next we will see how effective the deletion of the telegram app from the Russian app stores will be. Because of the centralized nature of the stores telegram can’t do much with it (they can try publishing clones of the client under unaffiliated entities, but apple and google can easily ban those too). Also it is rumored that the client uses push notifications to deliver proxy settings to devices and these also can be easily blocked by the store owners. Interesting times.
- BubuIIC 9y agoNot much rumor there, it's right in the spec: https://core.telegram.org/api/push-updates#service-notifications https://core.telegram.org/api/push-updates#service-notificat... It's also actually pretty clever.
- dunkelheit 9y agoThanks, good to know. And to open that page I had to use a vpn!
- foka86 9y agoWe used Telegram as the main tool for our team's communication. We all applied proxy settings but it's almost impossible to work without a VPN enabled :(.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- DIN0777 9y agoПОШЛИ НА ХУЙ ПИДАРАСЫ!
- shokunin 9y agoLove it!
- miovoid 9y ago18M already
- viktorpw 9y ago18 millions now, things go crazy and out of control
- viktorpw 9y ago18 millions now Things go crazy
- ayumukasuga 9y agoYou can watch how internet is dying here https://2018.schors.spb.ru/ https://2018.schors.spb.ru/ Graph represents a number of blocked IPs.
- mrarjen 9y agoThat's quite a lot, It be funny to see how far this will go with Telegram still functional.
- campuscodi 9y agoI see the number of blocked IPs has reached 16 million. How wonderful!
- candiodari 9y agoThis used to be a big problem for colo and decidated service providers. You get 2-3 napster/bittorrent/kazaa/... or worse, some website some law enforcement agency finds objectionable ... with users renting/paying for servers and poef entire countries and large isps block all your ranges. Happened all the time.
- konart 9y ago5M as of now.
- DIN0777 9y agoПОШЛИ НА ХУЙ!!!
- raverbashing 9y agoSounds like a good reason to advocate for IPv6
- keketi 9y agoIf IPv6 was used Russia would ban address ranges instead.
- passwd 9y agoI think he meant that only Telegram would be be blocked instead of possibly affecting half of the Internet on the way there. For Telegram it wouldn't be any better.
- jandrese 9y agoThey would still be blocking the IPv6 netblocks assigned to Amazon and Google, only it would be easier because the blocks would be more contiguous.
- passwd 9y agoI'm assuming it would be easier having one IPv6 address used only by a single application, that's why. Amazon/Google services would be less affected then. There's a whole different question if government would bother to be that precise, still.
- jandrese 9y agoThe whole point of moving to the cloud was to make themselves harder to block. I don't think they would self-defeat by limiting themselves to a single /64 or something.
- gsich 9y agohow would that help?
- fehyjn 9y agonearly 6 million now
- pandasun 9y agoIs http://zapret-info.gov.ru http://zapret-info.gov.ru being DDoS-ed?
- tici_88 9y agoMaybe the goal of the Russian government was to block the Amazon and Google APIs in the first place, and they used Telegram as a convenient excuse. Just a thought.
- gruez 9y agoso basically what china's doing
- pushpankar 9y agoYour thought is out of the box.
- Keloo 9y agoUsually Russia don't play that smart. Wondering how would they replace those services.
- adventured 9y agoIt would actually seem like an ideal way to force the adoption of native cloud service replacements (regardless of quality or competitiveness of the offering). Russia has tended to go that way with most things, whether Mail.ru, VK or Yandex. Russia has a very long history of being insular like that and the powers that have dominated Russia the last century have a vested interest in keeping it that way.
- y_molodtsov 9y agoI wouldn't say the Russian government cares a lot about its main players, like Chinese do. Actually, they've spent millions building Sputnik — a government owned search engine that nobody used. If they were just being protectionist, I'd be able to understand them in some way. But it's deeper.
- chupasaurus 9y agoThe only reason why local hosters are making money is local personal data law which restricts that PD of russian citizen should be stored inside Russia, because their prices and level of service is non-competitive to i.e. DO or OVH.
- Keloo 9y ago15M IPs blocked. Are they going to block the whole internet??
- pandasun 9y agoThere's a pull request with 127.0.0.1 in it. https://github.com/zapret-info/z-i/pull/10/commits/8394b2026cf9e81bb9392e6cef549848a161369f https://github.com/zapret-info/z-i/pull/10/commits/8394b2026... Wonder if they'll merge it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- degorov 9y agoThat repository is obviously just a copy and is not (and in fact can't be) used by ISPs.
- slezyr 9y agoIt a repo of "leaked" blacklist. Roskomnadzor don't publish it to public and share it only with ISPs.
- rzhikharevich 9y agoThey do publish it, but here: http://eais.rkn.gov.ru http://eais.rkn.gov.ru
- slezyr 9y agoWhere? It's just a way to check single domain/ip/page if it's blacklisted or not. They don't give access to entire blacklist.
- avaika 9y agoThey already blocked it once. As they normally block domain and IP, they ran into issue when owner of blocked domain set the A record to 127.0.0.1. The same "hack" was used to block Google and other huge sites. Once they found out this "hole", they introduced a white list of resources which shouldn't be blocked. These guys are really "smart" )
- konart 9y agohttps://2018.schors.spb.ru/ https://2018.schors.spb.ru/ 16M already.
- Fremis 9y ago16 millions already.
- kokx 9y agoSo, Telegram is blocked. But Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are still online. Hence, this is pushing users of a (relatively) country-neutral service, towards more American services. Seems like a weird move for Russia.
- pentae 9y agoAny reasonable person would deduce that Facebook/American services are simply compliant.
- speg 9y agoPerhaps those American services are easier to compromise...
- huhtenberg 9y agoThis may also mean that Facebook is complying with the Russian government demands for at-will access to WhatsApp and Messenger content.
- csydas 9y agoI think a much simpler and more elegant answer is "they didn't think of that, they just want to block Telegram." As someone in Russia, the block pretty much only hinders use of the legitimate services, not of Telegram. Numerous services exist to allow it to continue, and the block is a hack-job to try to prove a point.
- abhiminator 9y ago> WhatsApp and Messenger content. (emphasis mine) Isn't WhatsApp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted making it next to impossible even for developers (Facebook Inc. in this case) to access the transmitted messages' content?
- andrepd 9y agoWhat use is it being end-to-end encrypted if, for all you know, they store the keys, or even decrypt and store all contents on their servers...
- Keloo 9y agoCan't wait for Durov comments on this. Really interested in the tech details. Any telegram developer here??
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- petercooper 9y agoThe founder of Telegram has just put this in his public Telegram channel - https://t.me/durov https://t.me/durov: "For the last 24 hours Telegram has been under a ban by internet providers in Russia. The reason was our refusal to provide encryption keys to Russian security agencies. For us, this was an easy decision. We promised our users 100% privacy and would rather cease to exist than violate this promise. Despite the ban, we haven’t seen a significant drop in user engagement so far, since Russians tend to bypass the ban with VPNs and proxies. We also have been relying on third-party cloud services to remain partly available for the rest of our users. Thank you for your support and loyalty, Russian users of Telegram. Thank you, Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft – for not taking part in political censorship. Russia accounts for ~7% of the Telegram user base, and even if we lose that entire market, Telegram’s organic growth in other regions will compensate for this loss within a couple of months. However, it is personally important for me to make sure we do everything we can for our Russian users. To support internet freedoms in Russia and elsewhere I started giving out bitcoin grants to individuals and companies who run socks5 proxies and VPN. I am happy to donate millions of dollars this year to this cause, and hope that other people will follow. I called this Digital Resistance – a decentralized movement standing for digital freedoms and progress globally."
- baq 9y agostatement like that is an easy way to get yourself in sights of the CBP PФ i guess
- on_and_off 9y agosadly Telegram seems down right now
- sAbakumoff 9y agoHere is the blocked IP counter https://2018.schors.spb.ru https://2018.schors.spb.ru The page is in Russian, but the graph should be clear. It's now 16M IP's!!! It causes multiple problems in various services in Russia, but Telegram is still working as is :-0)
- nashashmi 9y ago"The internet needs to have a better way to block parts of it without taking down the rest of the internet." - Internal communication of the Russian Security agency
- MrDisposable 9y agoRussian here. Good job Roskomnadzor. You just taught quite a few people to use VPN -- including me. And, as a side benefit, you created another image problem for Putin's regime (as if he needed any more of that). I already had Bitlocker on all my PCs, 2FA everywhere, moved from Gmail to Fastmail, and VPN was one of the last privacy-related things I procrastinated on. Now I have VPN on all my desktops and on my phone, turned on by default. And I also switched to 1.1.1.1 for DNS. Thank you government, I guess?
- pmlnr 9y agoVPN doesn't give you privacy; it only allows you to bypass blocks (and introduce yourself to blocks in other countries or services though). VPN providers can still log your every move.
- drdaeman 9y agoThe difference is, VPN providers, unlike ISPs normally don't have your home address and passport info[1]. Some don't have your name at all, unless your traffic leaks your identity - e.g. when you're paying for VPN service with Bitcoin. Even more, they're generally out of your jurisdiction, which acts as some barrier against frivolous requests. _____ [1] In Russia every ISP is legally required to perform this sort of KYC and keep those records for a while.
- skrowl 9y agoConsider using VeraCrypt instead of Microsoft's closed source BitLocker. Basically for the same reason's you'd use Telegram over Facebook's WhatsApp.
- lostmsu 9y agoHere's the thing: there should be rioting. But there isn't.
- lostmsu 9y agoHere's what the article should be: Russia bans lots of AWS and GCP IPs to see no riot.
- drdaeman 9y agoIt's rather "Russia bans lots of AWS and GCP IPs just because they can." There is no chance of riot happening. A power play - sure. It's not the first (and surely not the last, unless something unthinkable happens) time our Tsar and his boyars introduce "countermeasures" against "foreign agents" that barely affect anyone abroad, but are essentially showing the world what kind of enforced restrictions Russian serfdom can tolerate for "national security" reasons - if any reasons at all. When the Soviets had dissolved, Russia had its internal power struggles and was late to this game - but as we've entered this era of stabilnost' (cf. Harmonious Society) we're catching up fast.
- banana_giraffe 9y agoInteresting to see which regions they're blocking, and how much they're blocking in each region. For IPv4 addresses only: Region Desc IPs Blocked % Blocked ap-northeast-1 Asia Pacific (Tokyo) 1984800 786451 39.62% ap-northeast-2 Asia Pacific (Seoul) 459024 131073 28.55% ap-northeast-3 Asia Pacific (Osaka-Local) 65808 0 0.00% ap-south-1 Asia Pacific (Mumbai) 524560 65542 12.49% ap-southeast-1 Asia Pacific (Singapore) 1067552 425990 39.90% ap-southeast-2 Asia Pacific (Sydney) 1147168 163852 14.28% ca-central-1 Canada (Central) 196880 3 0.00% cn-north-1 China (Beijing) 231456 0 0.00% cn-northwest-1 China (Ningxia) 100368 0 0.00% eu-central-1 EU (Frankfurt) 1049888 787013 74.96% eu-north-1 EU (North tba) 65808 0 0.00% eu-west-1 EU (Ireland) 3757344 1966319 52.33% eu-west-2 EU (London) 393488 131087 33.31% eu-west-3 EU (Paris) 131344 1 0.00% sa-east-1 South America (Sao Paulo) 491808 65536 13.33% us-east-1 US East (N. Virginia) 10317600 4260203 41.29% us-east-2 US East (Ohio) 1179920 131079 11.11% us-gov-east-1 AWS GovCloud (US, East) 65552 0 0.00% us-gov-west-1 AWS GovCloud (US) 131088 32768 25.00% us-west-1 US West (N. California) 1311536 196642 14.99% us-west-2 US West (Oregon) 4917552 1769549 35.98% Total 29590544 10913108 36.88%
- formatCvt 9y agoVideo about this situation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVFdFoj83a8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVFdFoj83a8
- n0mer 9y agoquote from https://github.com/aspnet/Docs/issues/5832 https://github.com/aspnet/Docs/issues/5832 : "That's not about the Azure's sites only. Almost each of Microsoft's sites is absolutely unusable in Russia now, like: Docs, MSDN, Visual Studio, Office, Windows, Xbox, all of them and many others are almost dead now."