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Hi, pal. I live in Moscow too, and I agree with you: what's happening is really really sad. I use github for everyday work, and suddenly I failed to connect. I

Hi, pal. I live in Moscow too, and I agree with you: what's happening is really really sad. I use github for everyday work, and suddenly I failed to connect. I need my job actually, you know? And they just broke it. For what? For blocking one file, which nobody cared about? Are they serious? This is fucking insane. And regime is fucking insane. And "replace your t-shirt with a patriotic one" ads on streets are just too fucking dumb to be true. WTF?! 2013 wasn't too bad, and I had no thoughts about moving to another country, but in just one year everything gone to shit.

acqq 12y ago
How do they ban it actually? In my West (!) European country (I don't know of any European country that doesn't do some censorship) they just serve court order to the providers, the providers remove the entries from the DNS but the banned sites are still reachable using the IP address. They you just need to fix your etc hosts file. Try with https://192.30.252.128 https://192.30.252.128 and accept the certificate if it has A0:C4:A7:46:00:ED:A7:2D:C0:BE:CB:9A:8C:B6:07:CA:58:EE:74:5E SHA-1 fingerprint. (The uploaders can be related to the companies selling VPN access to Russians.)
- guycalledfrank 12y ago
  In Russia they seem to force all ISPs to ban specific IP addresses. Obviously, it blocks many stuff, and not just one page. I really HOPE that it'll be resolved soon, because a few months ago we had similar problems with wordpress and even youtube (!), but it was fixed in 1-2 days, because, you know, everyone watches youtube, and blocking half of it makes everyone mad. But github is not what everyone uses, it's just a thing for coders like me, so I'm also afraid, they wont give a shit, because only a "minority" of their clients complained. --- Can't load suggested IP as well
  - vladtaltos 12y ago
    I'm travelling frequently to both Russia and Turkey - to avoid having stupid spatial location based limitations I've been using privateinternetaccess.com for more than 6 months now. it's pretty cheap and has gateways all around the world - I recommend it without any hesitation... I especially like having access to streaming video for the shows I watch that is limited to country ip's like the daily show...
    - acqq 12y ago
      We're hackers, let's promote using our own servers and service providers, don't support the VPN sellers who can be behind this particular blockade, maybe even bribing the censors. See the comments here, ssh is enough.
      - vladtaltos 12y ago
        yes of course but that requires to have an always on computer to connect to...
    - acqq 12y ago
      See tummybug's message here: ssh -D to setup a local socks proxy is far easier.
  - acqq 12y ago
    I really suspect the sellers of VPN are involved. Managing to DOS the site that the professionals use, those that are able to use VPN too and are more probae to pay.
  - hal9000xp 12y ago
    I'm totally agree with you that they don't care about minority at all (by the way, in any field). I think this issue with GitHub will be resolved soon. But in general, this Internet Restriction Bill (Federal law of Russian Federation no. 139-FZ of 2012-07-28) is double purpose tool. On the one hand it serves its first official purpose (i.e. by blocking illegal content). It often do it completely awkward and don't care about legitimate users (the issue with GitHub is the good example). On the second hand it's very good and easy to use tool for internet censorship. For example, it's so easy to block sites with legitimate information which current regime don't like. Just think about "sudden" blocking of GitHub or Wikipedia as a training for them (i.e. just to make sure that in case of political instability they can shutdown anything pretty quickly).
    - acqq 12y ago
      Or follow the money, who profits in this particular case? See my other comments here.
- pantalaimon 12y ago
  > I don't know of any European country that doesn't do some censorship Germany doesn't, there where large protests when it was attempted in 2009 under the pretext of blocking child pornography. Actually I'm only aware of Britain and Sweden censoring the web here in Europe, but enlighten me if I missed something.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    At least one company has been court ordered to block access to the Pirate Bay. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_The_Pirate_Bay http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_... > On 13 May 2010, the Hamburg District Court ordered an injunction against CB3Rob Ltd & Co KG (Cyberbunker) and its operator, Mr. Sven Olaf Kamphuis, restraining them from connecting The Pirate Bay site to the Internet.[24] The injunction application was brought by the Motion Picture Association's member companies. Depending how you define censorship: can I sell a game that features Nazi symbols - such as the swastika - in Germany?
    - darklajid 12y ago
      That example (Nazi symbol) gets old.. [1] Can I burn the American Flag or (in your case, if I'm correctly understanding that you're in London) the Union Jack in a public place? What about nudity (no clue in the UK, but I'm still laughing hard about 'nipplegate' to this very day) on TV? Every culture probably sets acceptable limits in what you can show/express/say or do (even the US free speech isn't protecting you from being sued for libel/hate speech or similar things, as far as I can tell). Yes, Swastikas/Nazi related symbols might be unpopular and even forbidden here. I refuse to consider that censorship, to be honest. 1: Wikipedia even seems to have an english page for this example - guess it's just so popular. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a
      - DanBC 12y ago
        There's no censorship laws about burning the Union flag in a public place. > I refuse to consider that censorship, to be honest. I did say it depends how you define censorship. Note that I didn't say this was bad!
- kravietz 12y ago
  Using the IP based URL won't work because GitHub correctly enforces the canonical address with a HTTP redirect. It will bring you back to the blocked IP. I spent quite a lot of time in Russia each year and these bans seem to be lifted after a few weeks if they are as absurd as this one, and you can still bypass them easily with VPN.
  - schrodinger 12y ago
    Can you just add an entry to your hosts file?
- kasthack 12y ago
  >How do they ban it actually? My ISP just changes DNS response. All blocked domains are resolved to local server that shows message like this: https://who.ec/iWN https://who.ec/iWN (Site is blocked. Legal reason: blah-blah-blah) Some providers just block access to IPs. My friend's blog lost ~300 visits/day becasuse it used same cloudflare node as blocked site. Rostelecom uses MitM & self-signed certificate for more accurate filtering.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Me exactly. Didn't think about moving, now it's the only thing I think of. I actually gave Russia a big credit on patriotism and it wasted it all. It's done for me. The country where I grew up (for good or bad) no longer exists, they destroyed it.
- askoma 12y ago
  oh man i feel the same.....
andyjohnson0 12y ago
"And "replace your t-shirt with a patriotic one" ads on streets are just too fucking dumb to be true." Are you referring to [1]? Very worrying: like a North Korea style personality cult. How prevalent is this? [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/10/07/patriotism-is-the-latest-fashion-in-moscow/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/10/07...
- guycalledfrank 12y ago
  No, I didn't mean Putin T-shirt (I never saw that one before), but the same page has a photo of what I meant: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2014/10/Patriotic-Tshirts-1024x768.jpg&w=1484 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://im...
DominikR 12y ago
Well what did you expect to happen? Most Russians support Putin and especially his foreign policy and when Russia got sanctioned because of that policy many were personally offended. So they made t-shirts that referr to these sanctions, that are in their view offending them. It is an absolutely normal response for any society that is collectively sanctioned/attacked.

acqq 12y ago

How do they ban it actually? In my West (!) European country (I don't know of any European country that doesn't do some censorship) they just serve court order to the providers, the providers remove the entries from the DNS but the banned sites are still reachable using the IP address. They you just need to fix your etc hosts file. Try with https://192.30.252.128 https://192.30.252.128 and accept the certificate if it has A0:C4:A7:46:00:ED:A7:2D:C0:BE:CB:9A:8C:B6:07:CA:58:EE:74:5E SHA-1 fingerprint. (The uploaders can be related to the companies selling VPN access to Russians.)

guycalledfrank 12y ago
In Russia they seem to force all ISPs to ban specific IP addresses. Obviously, it blocks many stuff, and not just one page. I really HOPE that it'll be resolved soon, because a few months ago we had similar problems with wordpress and even youtube (!), but it was fixed in 1-2 days, because, you know, everyone watches youtube, and blocking half of it makes everyone mad. But github is not what everyone uses, it's just a thing for coders like me, so I'm also afraid, they wont give a shit, because only a "minority" of their clients complained. --- Can't load suggested IP as well
- vladtaltos 12y ago
  I'm travelling frequently to both Russia and Turkey - to avoid having stupid spatial location based limitations I've been using privateinternetaccess.com for more than 6 months now. it's pretty cheap and has gateways all around the world - I recommend it without any hesitation... I especially like having access to streaming video for the shows I watch that is limited to country ip's like the daily show...
  - acqq 12y ago
    We're hackers, let's promote using our own servers and service providers, don't support the VPN sellers who can be behind this particular blockade, maybe even bribing the censors. See the comments here, ssh is enough.
    - vladtaltos 12y ago
      yes of course but that requires to have an always on computer to connect to...
  - acqq 12y ago
    See tummybug's message here: ssh -D to setup a local socks proxy is far easier.
- acqq 12y ago
  I really suspect the sellers of VPN are involved. Managing to DOS the site that the professionals use, those that are able to use VPN too and are more probae to pay.
- hal9000xp 12y ago
  I'm totally agree with you that they don't care about minority at all (by the way, in any field). I think this issue with GitHub will be resolved soon. But in general, this Internet Restriction Bill (Federal law of Russian Federation no. 139-FZ of 2012-07-28) is double purpose tool. On the one hand it serves its first official purpose (i.e. by blocking illegal content). It often do it completely awkward and don't care about legitimate users (the issue with GitHub is the good example). On the second hand it's very good and easy to use tool for internet censorship. For example, it's so easy to block sites with legitimate information which current regime don't like. Just think about "sudden" blocking of GitHub or Wikipedia as a training for them (i.e. just to make sure that in case of political instability they can shutdown anything pretty quickly).
  - acqq 12y ago
    Or follow the money, who profits in this particular case? See my other comments here.
pantalaimon 12y ago
> I don't know of any European country that doesn't do some censorship Germany doesn't, there where large protests when it was attempted in 2009 under the pretext of blocking child pornography. Actually I'm only aware of Britain and Sweden censoring the web here in Europe, but enlighten me if I missed something.
- DanBC 12y ago
  At least one company has been court ordered to block access to the Pirate Bay. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_The_Pirate_Bay http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_... > On 13 May 2010, the Hamburg District Court ordered an injunction against CB3Rob Ltd & Co KG (Cyberbunker) and its operator, Mr. Sven Olaf Kamphuis, restraining them from connecting The Pirate Bay site to the Internet.[24] The injunction application was brought by the Motion Picture Association's member companies. Depending how you define censorship: can I sell a game that features Nazi symbols - such as the swastika - in Germany?
  - darklajid 12y ago
    That example (Nazi symbol) gets old.. [1] Can I burn the American Flag or (in your case, if I'm correctly understanding that you're in London) the Union Jack in a public place? What about nudity (no clue in the UK, but I'm still laughing hard about 'nipplegate' to this very day) on TV? Every culture probably sets acceptable limits in what you can show/express/say or do (even the US free speech isn't protecting you from being sued for libel/hate speech or similar things, as far as I can tell). Yes, Swastikas/Nazi related symbols might be unpopular and even forbidden here. I refuse to consider that censorship, to be honest. 1: Wikipedia even seems to have an english page for this example - guess it's just so popular. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a
    - DanBC 12y ago
      There's no censorship laws about burning the Union flag in a public place. > I refuse to consider that censorship, to be honest. I did say it depends how you define censorship. Note that I didn't say this was bad!
kravietz 12y ago
Using the IP based URL won't work because GitHub correctly enforces the canonical address with a HTTP redirect. It will bring you back to the blocked IP. I spent quite a lot of time in Russia each year and these bans seem to be lifted after a few weeks if they are as absurd as this one, and you can still bypass them easily with VPN.
- schrodinger 12y ago
  Can you just add an entry to your hosts file?
kasthack 12y ago
>How do they ban it actually? My ISP just changes DNS response. All blocked domains are resolved to local server that shows message like this: https://who.ec/iWN https://who.ec/iWN (Site is blocked. Legal reason: blah-blah-blah) Some providers just block access to IPs. My friend's blog lost ~300 visits/day becasuse it used same cloudflare node as blocked site. Rostelecom uses MitM & self-signed certificate for more accurate filtering.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

Me exactly. Didn't think about moving, now it's the only thing I think of. I actually gave Russia a big credit on patriotism and it wasted it all. It's done for me. The country where I grew up (for good or bad) no longer exists, they destroyed it.

askoma 12y ago
oh man i feel the same.....

andyjohnson0 12y ago

"And "replace your t-shirt with a patriotic one" ads on streets are just too fucking dumb to be true." Are you referring to [1]? Very worrying: like a North Korea style personality cult. How prevalent is this? [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/10/07/patriotism-is-the-latest-fashion-in-moscow/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/10/07...

guycalledfrank 12y ago
No, I didn't mean Putin T-shirt (I never saw that one before), but the same page has a photo of what I meant: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2014/10/Patriotic-Tshirts-1024x768.jpg&w=1484 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://im...

DominikR 12y ago

Well what did you expect to happen? Most Russians support Putin and especially his foreign policy and when Russia got sanctioned because of that policy many were personally offended. So they made t-shirts that referr to these sanctions, that are in their view offending them. It is an absolutely normal response for any society that is collectively sanctioned/attacked.