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From what I've heard second-hand (my SO has a friend who frequently travels to China), they do actually block people's private one-off VPN servers quite effecti
by ryan-c 8y ago
From what I've heard second-hand (my SO has a friend who frequently travels to China), they do actually block people's private one-off VPN servers quite effectively.
Have a look at https://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/116/archive/fall2016/ctang.pdf https://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/116/archive/fall2016/ctang.pdf - it talks about GFW using machine learning with flow analysis to do this.
- userchris 8y agoI took that class (comp 116) a few years ago! Just had some fun finding and rereading my own final paper from the archives (the one you linked to makes mine seem way less interesting). Ming is a really awesome and unique lecturer.
- mar77i 8y agoIf I may ask, why pass the perfectly appropriate opportunity to... link it here?
- dev_dull 8y agoIndeed they do. It starts off working fine, but then eventually it stops. I assume they're running some AI/ML against the traffic pattern to determine if it's a VPN. I think they're light-years beyond simple traffic blocking and shaping.
- anticensor 8y agoWhy do they not outright block encrypted connections which they fail to bruteforce?
- jandrese 8y agoThat blocks a large percentage of the websites out there now. It's probably easier to just block all AWS/Azure/Linode/DigitalOcean/etc... blocks.
- walrus01 8y agobasically, netflow analysis tools feeding into an automated pattern matching system. 100% crypto traffic no matter what looks different than usual usage patterns. The netflow tools need some time to gather enough flow statistics between your outside-china VPN endpoint and your domestic IP, but once that's gathered, it's pretty hard to get around. tools like obfsproxy for openvpn can help.