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Kazakhstan government is intercepting HTTPS traffic in its capital (again)
- arpa 6y agoIf at first you don't succeed, tou try again, again and again... until a significant percentage of your less technically savvy populace is interceptable.
- nicbou 6y agoEventually the opposition gets weary, and you can sneak it in
- niwork 6y agoHow would it work if you had a VPN and a private certificate installed on your browser? 1. Traffic encrypted in browser using SSL 2. Traffic routed to VPN server 3. Traffic routed to target web server over public internet* 4. Back to VPN server 5. Back to browser *I assume at this point the Kazakh government can intercept the traffic and decrypted the HTTPS traffic, but that would itself be garbage because it's been encrypted by the VPN. Is this correct?
- arpa 6y agoIf the VPN endpoint is in KZ, then yes. Otherwise, no. However, if you were to be a person of interest, it would be possible to spoof the page of your vpn provider and provide you with fake vpn.
- type0 6y agoCybersecurity training exercise with great success, ah very nice!
- unnouinceput 6y agoBorat reference?
- f311a 6y agoThe goverment created a commercial as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRGXq4t9wY4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRGXq4t9wY4
- politelemon 6y agoAre they reusing the original CA? That's supposedly still blocked by Firefox isn't it? https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2019/08/21/protecting-our-users-in-kazakhstan/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2019/08/21/protecting-our-... --- Nevermind, I went and checked. It's a new CA. The certificate is here: https://isca.gov.kz/ https://isca.gov.kz/ The first button downloads the cert. It's a newly issued one, valid from Feb 2020 to 2040. I've put it on Pastebin as well: https://pastebin.com/ERqCMCBf https://pastebin.com/ERqCMCBf --- Common Name: Information Security Certification Authority CA Organization: ISCA Country: KZ Valid From: February 27, 2020 Valid To: February 27, 2040 Issuer: Information Security Certification Authority CA,ISCA Serial Number: 287dce0ce3c6f7aaa33ff965e76ea98c824a59db
- lol768 6y agoThere's a bug open on BugZilla to get this new CA added to OneCRL: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1680927 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1680927
- politelemon 6y agoI've tried finding my way through that Atlas Ripe website but it's very confusing. I don't know how others are able to pinpoint that problem so well.
- lol768 6y agohttps://atlas.ripe.net/frames/measurements/28334941/#!probes https://atlas.ripe.net/frames/measurements/28334941/#!probes is showing you that, for a v4 connection to twitter.com, probe 6745 is getting back a TLS cert which does not match the cert provided to the majority of other probes. If you expand the row you can see the nation state MitM: notice the O=ISCA, C=KZ.
- bzb6 6y agoSo what’s the point? If you don’t trust the certificate you won’t be able to browse the internet at all.
- schoolornot 6y agoMore interesting to me is which US vendors are involved.
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- 2Gkashmiri 6y agoSo... they resort to intercepting traffic rather than outright blocking them. Interesting. That would mean they want people to speak and they can take them out? In India administered Kashmir, they just banned the entire intenet for months, then whitelisted websites one by one. Prevention is better than cure? Fuck these governenments.
- vbezhenar 6y agoI think that they want to block specific URLs without blocking entire domains. For example block specific youtube video without blocking entire youtube. Of course technically they can spy as well, so one should assume so.
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agoIndia already blocks specific YouTube videos in geographical India, they don't want dissent. For that they just approach YouTube or twitter or whatever because these companies have financial incentives aka ads to earn in India and non compliance would mean no business. Big woop. I was routed through a bunch of proxies at ISP level last year because of the internet gag by India and I did not feel safe. Not that I didnt do shit what I wanted to but for the end user, https://theintercept.com/2020/12/06/kashmir-social-media-police/ https://theintercept.com/2020/12/06/kashmir-social-media-pol... This just came up yesterday. Now, I have said this multiple tines before, they dont have "sophisticated surveillance techniques" as alluded to by the article here but a simple handle search in twitter, which links to FB, which links to phone, address, work, parents and next thing you know police are knocking on the door. Its just really scummy of the government to assume they can kill dissent or that these scare tactics would work. They don't.
- gumby 6y agoSurely people own devices (TVs etc) that don’t support updating the list of CAs?
- dheera 6y agoYes but people probably access Facebook/Twitter/other potentially politically sensitive content more with their phone than through their TV, and their phone would have probably been handed to them by their operator with the updated CA already installed.
- sgc 6y agoPlus hey are aware of this type of thing now and more politically minded people will be taking the precautions they are able to.
- grishka 6y ago> and their phone would have probably been handed to them by their operator with the updated CA already installed. Outside of the US, almost no one buys their phones from their carriers. You usually buy an unlocked phone from an electronics store and it's sealed in the box. You're the first person to ever turn it on.
- paulryanrogers 6y agoWhen visiting a neighboring country the local market's Wifi forced an intermediate cert which my US Blackberry immediately flagged. I learned to assume every network and local device was compromised.
- 29083011397778 6y agoWhat year was this? I can't imagine Android BlackBerrys doing this.
- brobinson 6y agoWhen I landed in Fukuoka, Japan, the two free municipal and airport wifi networks both attempted to MITM https connections. I was pretty shocked.
- bergstromm466 6y agoWhy is this news when: 'US government is intercepting worldwide internet traffic through Silicon Valley and NSA cooperation (again, everyday)'
- robert_foss 6y agoBecause when the US does it is Freedom Interception, or Freeception if you will. And when its corporations do it, they are simply projecting Freedom into uncivilized* parts of the world. * uncivilized meaning both 'shithole' countries and those otherwise not a part of the USA
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- viraptor 6y agoBecause NSA collection does not involve breaking encryption on all connections for now. (No, the "SSL removed and added here" slide is not the same thing)
- mabbo 6y agoI keep trying to imagine a way that a website could inform a user "only these certificates are valid for me", but with a trusted MITM, it just doesn't seem like it's possible. Whatever content or data the website included, the MITM can just alter it accordingly. Short of a browser knowing what Certificates are allowed for what websites (and the trusted MITM not modifying THAT content) there just isn't a simple way to know that your connection is being monitored or modified. Short of quantum encryption, is there any simple way to detect such an attack once the user trusts the MITM's CA?
- arkadiyt 6y ago> it just doesn't seem like it's possible Mobile apps can do this with certificate pinning. Web apps used to be able to do this with HTTP Public Key Pinning (HPKP) [1], but it was deprecated because it was too much of a footgun. Instead you can monitor for certificates for your domain that aren't expected via Certificate Transparency logs. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Public_Key_Pinning https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Public_Key...
- nijave 6y ago>know that your connection is being monitored or modified Probably some low hanging fruit here are 1. Inspect the CA used by a few different websites 2. Try visiting the website from different countries (vpns and proxies) to see if the same cert is used Theoretically a MITM could tamper with the software download but I think for most cases this would be reasonable
- Edmond 6y agoA "trusted MITM" is just that, a trusted MITM...You kind of accept the compromises that come with such a setup. A CA that can issue a certificate to a third-party without the consent of the domain owner is not a trusted CA by definition. In other words the issue in Kazakhstan should probably not be viewed as a technical issue...authoritarian governments will always get their way if the only recourse against them is a technical solution. In the case of Kazakhstan, they are forcing their citizens to accept the compromised CA, that is not a technical problem to solve.
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- robert_foss 6y agoI wonder which Western company sold them the products to do so.
- arcticbull 6y agoTo be fair, this one could easily have been the PRC, they have some, uh, domain expertise.
- robert_foss 6y agoWhile that could be the case, the majority of surveillance infrastructure is sold by Western companies, Israel in particular being a terrible actor on this space.
- dilyevsky 6y agoThis is not cutting edge tech so you can dyi this pretty easily
- disown 6y ago> To be fair, this one could easily have been the PRC And to be fair, the PRC doesn't claim to be saints. > they have some, uh, domain expertise. And uh, we don't? It's so funny how I saw your username and immediately knew what your comment was going to be.
- anaganisk 6y agoEasy to hate on PRC, but majority of such acts are conducted by CIA supported or Israeli companies.
- nix23 6y agohttps://thehackernews.com/2015/12/kazakhstan-internet-spying.html https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/kazakhstan-internet-spying...
- dilyevsky 6y agoUh Huawei?
- darkhorn 6y agoTo protect your users Add your domain name to https://hstspreload.org https://hstspreload.org Get A+ from https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ Use DNSSEC for your domain name https://dnssec-name-and-shame.com https://dnssec-name-and-shame.com Enable Encrypted SNI in your web server https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni/ https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni/
- unilynx 6y agoNone of those steps will protect against a government requiring you to install a certificate
- crististm 6y agoI've talked with people at times that hierarchical CA is a bad idea and that peer-trust schemes are better for several reasons. They looked at me like I've just dropped from the Moon. I find these recent developments as evidence that I'm not.
- SahAssar 6y agoNone of that would help against this though, right? HPKP would if the site was visited before, but that is deprecated and removed from major browsers. Expect-CT might help but IIRC that is still a soft-fail.
- datameta 6y agoTranslation: "From December 6th 2020 there will be a study conducted in Nur-Sultan called "Cybersecurity Nur-Sultan 2020". We ask you to install a certificate of safety on all your devices in order to retain access to some foreign internet resources. Please, follow the link: [link]"
- matheusmoreira 6y ago> certificate of safety Gotta love government doublespeak...
- orbital-decay 6y agoIt's simply incorrect translation; the correct one is security certificate (безопасность means either security or safety in Russian, often leading to confusion). The rest is correct.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- datameta 6y agoYou're correct. The translation should indeed be "security certificate". Would edit it if I still could.
- afrcnc 6y agoUser complaints: https://old.reddit.com/r/Kazakhstan/comments/k7y976/anyone_install_the_safety_certificate/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Kazakhstan/comments/k7y976/anyone_i...
- jedimind 6y agoDon't editorialise titles. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- vbezhenar 6y agoI live in Kazakhstan and I can confirm that I'm observing this behavior on Google websites (they don't MitM all websites and I think they don't MitM all connections, just some percentage). Simple IPsec VPN works fine.
- ytch 6y agoHow a device (Android, iPhone, Mac and others) do initialize at first boot/system recovery if this CA is not installed?
- throw0101a 6y agoOne of the purported benefits of DoH, and especially of not using one's ISP's DNS servers, was privacy from authoritative governments. Some critics of DoH, and especially centralized DoH, said that it would not help; see "DoH for oppressive regimes": * https://blog.powerdns.com/2019/09/25/centralised-doh-is-bad-for-privacy-in-2019-and-beyond/ https://blog.powerdns.com/2019/09/25/centralised-doh-is-bad-... See also Paul Vixie: * https://blog.apnic.net/2019/11/04/dns-wars/ https://blog.apnic.net/2019/11/04/dns-wars/ Personally I prefer DoT: it allows me to control resolution on my network, but if you want to allow 953 and use a third party DNS service because of your ISP, you still can.
- dmoldavanov 6y agoDPI Vendors: Belarus = Sandvine (USA) Kazakhstan = Allot (Israel)