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> government being able to mandate that a certain website not open at all on a browser/system is uncharted territory and even the most repressive regimes in th
by bonzini 3y ago
> government being able to mandate that a certain website not open at all on a browser/system is uncharted territory and even the most repressive regimes in the world prefer to block websites further up the network (ISPs, etc.) so far.
Repressive government's don't do their blocking at the browser level because it is completely ineffective. Anyone who wants to access the forbidden websites will be able to do so anyway.
- mywittyname 3y agoI think simply modifying the hosts file on a machine to "rename" the domain of the site you want to visit would be sufficient to bypass a browser-level block.
- pmontra 3y agoThe browser must send a request with a Host header with the correct site name or the server will 404 it. What could work is a local proxy server that translates the host name in the request. It must MITM the https requests though.
- Joeri 3y agoIs MITM even possible for HSTS preloaded websites?
- johnchristopher 3y agoWhat we want or would end up with is a Firefox plugin to toggle a boolean.
- Zuiii 3y ago> The browser must send a request with a Host header with the correct site name or the server will 404 it. Only if you configured it that way. Most http servers have a "default" website which they will happly serve from if the Host header has no match. I expect these sites will continue to work just fine in firefox using the host file hack or via alternative DNS domains. Unless they just want a foot-in-the-door law to make certain browsers illegal (to then expand on it later), blocking content at the terminal is not the way to do it. So so many ways to get around it.
- rrobukef 3y agoPlease just make the block-list a plain-text human-readable file. That way I can update the file when a new torrent website is convicted and black-listed.
- heretohelp232 3y agoI can confirm. The French government censors websites by forcing ISPs to delist stuff from their DNS servers. It's trivial to bypass simply by setting alternative DNS providers like Cloudflare.
- bleuarff 3y agoAnd not even all ISPs, only the few most popular ones. Even if that's probably 96% of internet users, that looks like the law does not treat all citizens equally.