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Unfortunately, thanks to the Great Firewall of China, there has been a lot of resources put in to fingerprint VPNs and block them by state actors. Fortunately,
by someotherperson 3y ago
Unfortunately, thanks to the Great Firewall of China, there has been a lot of resources put in to fingerprint VPNs and block them by state actors.
Fortunately, however, there is equally years of some of the smartest minds on the planet working to bypass Chinese censorship, so there are some great OpenVPN alternatives.
I really encourage you to look into something like Shadowsocks which Chinese people have found great success in using over the last several years.
In your case, however, it's worth mentioning that if you can't connect at all then it's likely they've blocked the commercial IPs of the VPN nodes.
It's quite sad that projects like Streisand[0] were archived, but I'm sure there are other alternatives that might make it just as easy to roll onto a server.
[0] https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand
- yellow_lead 3y agoCan anyone confirm Shadowsocks works anymore? When I tried to use it a few years ago, it got blocked in a few days. To be honest, I think they are blocking anything that exchanges a lot of data with oversesas IPs, after hitting a certain threshold.
- apfsx 3y agoShadowsocks and ShadowsocksR don’t work anymore in my experience in China or Iran. V2ray does which is the successor to those.
- b112 3y agoI wonder how many of these services are just state actors, who can then track people more directly.
- yellow_lead 3y agoThese are open source proxies, not centralized services, so I think it's unlikely. At least shadowsocks was well researched in the past, I'm not sure about v2ray.
- EasyMark 3y agoIf I was in Russia I would be a lot less afraid of USA/Britain/Germany MITM than I would of Putin's agents catching wind of the free flow of information and coming for me and my family and throwing us off the roof or putting polonium in our water supply.
- b112 3y agoInteresting. I said 'state actor' not 'western actor'. The state, any state, often employs such tactics to make people believe they are protected, and therefore said people will act more openly. There are a myriad of such known cases, in fact the examples are endless. So if one is in Russia... beware, for ways to get around blocking which work, may be ways secretly controlled by the Russian state. An example is a VPN service which is secretly run by the state, regardless of where it is incorporated or physically located. Another example is blocking products which are effective, but letting products which are easily MITM by the state to "work", thereby providing the illusion of security and safety. These tactics are thousands of years old, the employment of such methods is all that has changed. Make those which you distrust, use methods you control to organize. An example; the pub which is uses for meetings, is actually owned by state sympathizers, who claim otherwise.
- superkuh 3y agoShadowsocks does work against MITM attacks by my US ISP Comcast though. It is great software.
- apfsx 3y agoWouldn’t plain WireGuard also do that?
- superkuh 3y agoWireGuard is a lot heavier than shadowsocks-libev. shadowsocks-libev is literally under 5MB of ram used and very little CPU. Also very quick to compile and config. WireGuard is a full fledged heavy VPN. Shadowsocks can be used as a simple socks proxy if you want; and that's plenty for stopping Comcast from injecting malicious javascript into my HTTP connections.
- gruez 3y agoWhat "MITM attacks" are you talking about?
- cj 3y agoNot the person you're replying to, but most ISPs and cellular providers log DNS queries and use that to profile you or resell to data brokers. If you want to have some fun understanding this better, call up (for example) Verizon and have them send you the data they have on you. It's surprisingly detailed, including timestamped logs of every DNS query (in addition to specific profiling data, like "how likely you are to buy a new phone" or "household income", etc). https://www.verizon.com/support/download-and-view-vpd-file/ https://www.verizon.com/support/download-and-view-vpd-file/ After doing this myself, I always (at a minimum) use a privacy centric DNS and never the ISP's default.
- michael1999 3y agoStream-downscaling, ad injection, etc. US isp shenanigans.
- polski-g 3y ago
- Departed7405 3y agoThere aren't blocking automatically after heavy exchanges overseas as this mean you couldn't even use Microsoft and Apple services. But they do probe those servers and basically test if they will relay any network request. If they will, then they are a VPN and they will be blocked. Only two VPN providers have found a way arround this those are IVPN and Mullvad. The later use UDP over TVP obfuscation.
- circularfoyers 3y agoOutline (https://getoutline.org https://getoutline.org) is even easier to deploy than Streisand in my experience and uses Shadowsocks.
- quickslowdown 3y agoThis is really cool, thanks for sharing! I've been using Tail scale for a while, mostly because it's simple, but I don't love relying on some company for my VPN. Is this more like OpenVPN or Wireguard? Reading their site, it seems like it's closer to a traditional, OpenVPN-like connection, but I'm still interested in this over something like Nebula.
- nylonstrung 3y agoYou could also use headscale to self host a tailscale control server
- latchkey 3y agoHeadscale. https://github.com/juanfont/headscale https://github.com/juanfont/headscale
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago>getoutline.org uses cookies from Google to deliver and enhance the quality of its services and to analyze traffic. Learn more. Doesn't even let me decline cookies not required for operation of the website, yet wants me to trust them with my data? gtfo.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwaway22048 3y agoJust decline them in your browser settings...?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 8organicbits 3y agoWhat's the current legal risk of using a VPN in China or Russia these days? I found a couple articles about people getting charged, but none I know to be reputable or particularly well written.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoChina at least, isn’t a strong rule of law country, rather it is more of a rule by law one. So if they want to get you, they’ll find some law to get you on, and if they don’t, they won’t go after you for using a VPN or other minor offenses. So I wouldn’t really worry about it.
- machomaster 3y agoPretty much the same applies to Putin's Russia as well.
- d0mine 3y agoAre there any other types of countries? Note: you don't need to put something into law to silence someone. If necessary anyone can be canceled. Everybody is "guilty" but select few are prosecuted. Therefore the real power belongs to those who decides what issues can be ignored.
- cracrecry 3y agoYes, they are. There is a world of difference. In the West you normal people have so much power they do not even realise. You see that when you live outside it. In the West there is a long History of institutions(like cities) that went against the abuses of the people in charge. You were a servant, you entered a city(burg) you became free, the city protected you. This happened for centuries. In China something like that happened at specific periods, but eventually the Emperor took all the power. In China the Emperor or the Tzar in Russia could do anything. In Russia those that wanted freedom lost every single time. If a servant entered a city and the city did not deliver the fugitive, the Tzar will burn the city. The same happened with the Soviets. You want your own food? We will kill you all and send your children and wife to Siberia. Everybody else(not the Emperor) were servant. Now Xi or Putin are the new emperors, like Lenin, Stalin or Mao were. I have lived in China as a privileged engineer/expatriate. Basically most people have no idea what a country without rule of law(like China) is. >If necessary anyone can be canceled. Or you can cancel them. You consider yourself a victim, a nobody, but people can get public and get a million views and could do real damage to those in power.
- KomoD 3y agov2ray is a great alternative
- feedforward 3y agoShould point out when people go into the Sturm und Drang of the Great Firewall, that it was largely built by corporate America. https://www.wired.com/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do/ https://www.wired.com/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do/
- erebe__ 3y agoShameless plug, there is also wstunnel (i am its author) https://github.com/erebe/wstunnel/ https://github.com/erebe/wstunnel/, hope you enjoy.
- EasyMark 3y agoI imagine that is something that is not "top secret" that Xi can easily share with Putin and something that could be applied almost immediately to routers in Russia. That sucks that Russians can't see other perspectives. It doesn't seem to matter a lot since 80% of Russians still support him mindlessly, but those other 20% can help set a seed of doubt on his atrocities and autocratic lies but not if they can't get info.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]