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Tech giants will block Kazakhstan’s web surveillance efforts again
- daodedickinson 6y agoI don't see how Kazakhstan could've outbid the abusive oppressors
- rightbyte 6y agoOnly the big boys that get away with stuff like this. Why not distribute a modified Firefox browser if you want to spy on your citizens? Should be fairly doable and doesn't need any Big Tech blessing.
- AntiImperialist 6y agoWhy would the citizens install it?
- rightbyte 6y agoDo some handshake to the ISP from the browser or no internet for you. Make walled garden browser use cheaper like Zuckerberg does in Africa. To be clear I am not advocating this.
- shawnz 6y agoWhy would the citizens install the malicious certificate as it is? Because without it, they won't be able to browse the Internet
- acdha 6y agoBecause it comes preinstalled on everything sold in the country, you need to use it to access websites, and if you’re caught trying to bypass it there are penalties. You can’t “one weird trick” your way out of a repressive government.
- aorth 6y agoAnyone have another link for this? Current link redirects to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-session_a6986db8-b04a-4215-89ee-d9a972cab2ba https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_..., which is blocked at the DNS level on my network.
- tgragnato 6y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20201218095909/https://www.engadget.com/tech-giants-browsers-block-kazakhstan-web-surveillance-080031499.htmlhttps://www.engadget.com/tech-giants-browsers-block-kazakhstan-web-surveillance-080031499.html https://web.archive.org/web/20201218095909/https://www.engad...
- mechnesium 6y agoThis is just rich. I don’t know what’s funnier: Kazakhstan’s overt, bush league attempt at surveillance using certificates, or the virtue signaling by the Big N’s who surveil us daily at the behest of Uncle Sam.
- bb123 6y agoHmm so why Kazakhstan and not China? Is it because the Kazakh market isn't important to their bottom line? I'd love to know how big a market has to be before they play ball with the oppressors.
- PradeetPatel 6y agoIt comes down to identifying dependencies and justifying the necessity of partnering with a regime with relatively diverse/relaxed human right policies. My PR background tells me that this is a weighed decision - Condemning Kazakhstan will yield a considerable amount of media attention with very little opportunity cost. Whereas doing the same to China would get you fired as a PR professional.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- emptyfile 6y ago>Is it because the Kazakh market isn't important to their bottom line? Kazakhstan population 15 million, GDP 179.3 billion USD China population 1393 million, GDP 14,342.90 billion USD You might be onto something here.
- supergirl 6y agowhy Kazakhstan and not US
- cpursley 6y agoBecause this is an anti-Russia move.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fhhfdfvvvvg 6y agoWhy not the us too? I hear the nsa and fbi are doing a lot of illegal snooping and the police are torturing and killing minorities. I am not defending china, but all countries exploiting their citizens should be punished.
- tuyguntn 6y agoThis discussion ( https://youtu.be/Q9s6YggbTk4?t=65 https://youtu.be/Q9s6YggbTk4?t=65 ) with Azerbaijan president summarizes really well Western democracy (or hypocrisy or lets invent a new name capitalocrisy). When it comes to China, everyone is impotent taking actions, because they rely on China too much, when it comes to country like Kazakhstan or any other smaller country, everyone seem to become powerful and create sanctions. Thank you UN for not being able to do your job! UPD: it makes me sad so many Uighur people detained in camps, it is like living in 12th century, how this is happening in 21st century, beyond my understanding. People seem to forgive anything if they can get things little cheaper
- f6v 6y ago> it is like living in 12th century It’s more like 21st century where people of color and members of marginalized communities are forced to live in ghettos. No financial stability, prejudice, and violence.
- spoopyskelly 6y ago> where people of color and members of marginalized communities are forced to live in ghettos. You mean poor people.
- varjag 6y agoWhile I'm on the same page with you re China, it doesn't mean that actions should not be taken where they could be afforded by political realities. China and Russia gain strength in network effects of growing illiberal alliances, and taking the smaller fish helps.
- cute_boi 6y agobtw how would they handle android apps etc which pins the certs?
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoI was wondering the same. Presumably Netflix would only work through the browser, not through the apps available for various platforms.
- jeroenhd 6y agoI've worked for a company that specializes in blocking certain websites for certain people (porn blocking stuff). The company used MitM-attacks with a custom TLS certificate, just like the Kazakh government uses. There's two ways to deal with certificate pinning. The first is to apply SNI sniffing (which will work until eSNI makes its way into more software) to determine that a certain domain is related to a certain, permissible service and bypass the decryption filter. This can be coupled with certificate validation to prevent domain fronting. The second method requires rooting the device and using a tool like Frida to automatically disable any validation checks. On Android and iOS there are special APIs to do certificate pinning but not all apps leverage them. Many apps will also work fine if you install the CA to the system partition instead of using the user store. App developers often don't know that certificate authorities are even a thing that can be managed by the user, let alone that the set can be extended, so most apps use the default setting, which has been to only trust system certificates. This was changed back during the release of Android 7, before that time all apps defaulted to trusting user-installed certificates. The third option, which any company or government can take to get off easily, is to blame the app for trying to break your righteous surveillance and to leave the apps broken. Netflix can be made to work any time, all they need to do is release a patch that disables certificate pinning, so if the government can get the public to blame the apps, they get off scot free. The first method works transparently to applications. The second requires physical access to the device and rooting the OS, which can be impossible. The third only works if the people you're surveilling take your side. I'd guess they pick option 1 or 3.
- p410n3 6y ago
- hungryhobo 6y agohonest question, if the concern that a Kazakhstan government issued root CA could be used for backdoor for citizen's data, should I be concerned about whoever issued the root ca on my personal device? which are mostly US companies.
- lostmsu 6y agoYes, you should. As soon as there's proof some of them are compromised.
- air7 6y agoI've always found the size and obscurity of the pre installed root certificates list to be suspicious as any one of them can eavesdrop on any TLS communication. I've always assumed that every nation has atleast one under their control to allow MITMing .
- xg15 6y agoDoes "they are a private company, they can do whatever they want" also apply to international politics?
- boxmonster 6y agoCultural Learnings of Big Tech for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
- afrcnc 6y agoHere's the Mozilla post: https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2020/12/18/kazakhstan-root-2020/ https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2020/12/18/kazakhstan-roo...
- 0xbkt 6y agoWhy? What is their government so afraid of to inspect all country's traffic?
- bvcxxxx 6y agoI support the kazakhstans actions. They come out in the clear and let their people know what they are doing. They don't lie while under oath to the people supposed to be holding them accountable. They aren't hording vulnerabilities, spending millions trying to break crypto implementations, and undermining the trust of their citizens. They are straight up and honest. I wish more governments were like that.
- hit8run 6y agoKazakhian chief scientist Dr. Yamak will not like this. Especially now that Jonny the monkey (greatest national movie star http://jonnythemonkey.com/ http://jonnythemonkey.com/) disappeared they must try to shut down access to international online movie theater to prevent rise of foreign influence!