however, ISPs have begun rolling out white list (essentially an allow list of like a hundred websites) blocks, with mobile internet being essentially completely gone in many places, next step is white list blocks on home broadband ISPs, which has already started happening
these are extremely difficult if not impossible to bypass, with currently working solutions relying on being deployed to domestic cloud providers' whitelisted subnets
however, authorities have already been started cracking down on this, and with KYC requirements for those VPSs, these solutions are likely to soon vanish too (running a VPN service carries jail time with it)
there are some other fringe solutions, like encoding TCP traffic into a video signal, and streaming it over a call via a Russian service like VK video calls, however that relies on those websites being available abroad, and there is no telling how long this will remain a viable solution
i'm not sure what to do to be honest, just thought i'd share, if anyone has any solutions, i'd be very thankful, since i'm out of ideas, outside of going near a border and setting up a point to point wifi signal via a directed antenna (is that even viable anyways?)
thanks
(machine translation)
How would this ever work with a whitelist? did you even read the post?
1. Thanks to the sanctions, it is virtually impossible for RF citizens to purchase anything abroad with Russian credit cards.
2. VPN was design not to obfuscate but to encrypt - that is, the protocol doesn't conceal the fact that VPN channel is being used, you just cannot peek into the content in this channel. Which means that more and more sophisticated tools are being used to block VPN communications.
it looks like they are basically impossible to detect, given the failure to block them, outside of timing attacks (seeing if a request crosses Russia's border and comes back quickly after), however that is fully mitigated by just having having the vpn "disconnect" and route traffic directly to Russian unblocked sites, which would otherwise be able to perform such a timing attack detection
pretty interesting stuff, there are several versions of this system, and even the ones that have existed for a while work pretty well
- roskomnadzor just not being competent enough to implement the block fully
- they'll reserse the block, since it will likely completely cripple everything that relies on the internet (which is basically everything nowadays)
- they won't go through with the ban completely, since if they do, their job is sort of done, and they want to continue to exist to make money off of the digital infrastructure required to implement the block, and they'll just continue playing this game of cat and mouse
- outside internet connectivity will likely remain to some degree, it'll just be very slow and probably expensive, but i really struggle to see a country like Russia being completely cut off from the internet in the year of our lord 2026
i could be wrong, who knows, after all this whole situation is unprecedented, and human ingenuity sort of always finds a way
and in a somewhat positive note, mobile internet has come back today and the blocks are bypassable with a regular vpn now, even ones that aren't being hosted on whitelisted subnets
It's not going to work.
The key is to avoid protocols that are too “chatty”. You need simple request/response, with no timeout, where the response could be huge files you have requested. Then you can pass request/response over USB/MicroSD sneakernet or short lived VPN connection (before it can be detected and blocked).
Nostr is useful because identity is a key, so you can publish anonymously but people who like your content can verify that a piece of content comes from you. Also, if data can be brought across the border, it is very easy to republish it. If the situation degrades to where you are relying on sneakernet, bringing a week’s worth of Nostr events across the border and distributing it to others may be effective at keeping a small, slow lifeline open.
I fear we will see the same thing soon in the West especially if this war expands. Good luck and godspeed.
Edit: steganography would also be useful, if any sites that allow UGC are whitelisted.