Russia Blocks 167 VPNs, Steps Up OpenVPN and WireGuard Disruption (torrentfreak.com) 42
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The head of the Russian department responsible for identifying threats to the "stability, security and integrity" of the internet, has revealed the extent of the Kremlin's VPN crackdown. Former FSO officer Sergei Khutortsev, a central figure in Russia's 'sovereign internet' project, confirmed that 167 VPN services are now blocked along with over 200 email services. Russia is also reported as stepping up measures against protocols such as OpenVPN, IKEv2 and WireGuard. [...]
An in-depth report published by TheIns.ru has details of the monitoring/blocking system reportedly deployed in Russia, how much it costs (4.3 billion rubles/$43 million in 2020, 24.7 billion rubles/$247 million for 2022-2024), and the names of the companies supplying the components. The publication also obtained original documents that apparently show some of the protocols Russia initially intended to block. They include older VPN protocols IPSec, L2TP, and PPTP, plus the BitTorrent protocol still widely used today. The full report on the system, which reveals the use of Intel chips/chipsets in 965 servers manufactured by Huawei and already purchased by Russia, plus another 2400+ servers for 2023/24, is available here.
An in-depth report published by TheIns.ru has details of the monitoring/blocking system reportedly deployed in Russia, how much it costs (4.3 billion rubles/$43 million in 2020, 24.7 billion rubles/$247 million for 2022-2024), and the names of the companies supplying the components. The publication also obtained original documents that apparently show some of the protocols Russia initially intended to block. They include older VPN protocols IPSec, L2TP, and PPTP, plus the BitTorrent protocol still widely used today. The full report on the system, which reveals the use of Intel chips/chipsets in 965 servers manufactured by Huawei and already purchased by Russia, plus another 2400+ servers for 2023/24, is available here.
End of an era (Score:2)
It's unfortunate that the history of Russia is mostly one of fuck-ups and misfortune. They'
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's unfortunate that the history of Russia is mostly one of fuck-ups and misfortune.
It is what the Russians have made. Just have a look into the history books. Countries have the history and government that their citizens deserve.
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Yep. /., but one of the defining marks of Christianity, is we are all equal before God, King and Pauper.
I know God is not popular on
Thus Christian countries tend to look after their poor and even give dignity to prisoners (Although the USA, having worshipped money for so long now is doing poorly in this regard).
Communism rejects the spiritual and turns their people into 'units of work' for the serving of system. Thats a big demotivator and thus you have a country somewhat devoid of humanity and still reapin
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
One of the defining traits of the practice of Christianity is charity to make the giver look / feel good while ignoring the problem that caused the need for charity in the first place. It's God's plan that someone else suffers while you're prosperous.
There are non-religious philosophies that result in better behaviour. I've learned not to trust the kind of people who feel the need to advertise their Christianity.
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"I know God is not popular on /., but one of the defining marks of Christianity, is we are all equal before God, King and Pauper.
Thus Christian countries tend to look after their poor and even give dignity to prisoners"
WTF are you smoking?
It took 2 THOUSAND years after Yeshua ben Yosef for most Christians to even begin to start acting like that whereas MUCH, MUCH older religions such as Jainism extended that equality to ALL living beings.
Many punishments still common in Islamic countries such as cutting off
Re:End of an era (Score:4, Interesting)
> for most Christians to even begin to start acting like that
No, they started out that way and then Constantine wound up with an army full of pacifists so he had Augustine develop the Just War Theory and merged state and ecclesiastical government after just a few centuries.
It took until 1789 to get a government that had Christians that specifically walled itself off from ecclesiastical government.
That lasted a hundred years and then Marx got picked up by some Christians (ignoring the atheism part) and we got the Social Gospel movement and the anti-human amendments and two world wars and today some of them want to bring on the Third Temple end times prophesy Israel. And they staff the DoD.
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George Vancouver is now mostly remembered for his exploration & the places named after him but in his time he was also known as a brutal disciplinarian who, on at least one voyage, had nearly EVERY crew member flogged at least once!
And he's merely 1 example of a dignified Christian.
Don't forget that most trans-Atlantic slave traders, before slave trading was outlawed, were actually believing and devout Christians, sincerely believing that their righteous way of life was leading them to God's Heavens.
Moderation comes with affluence (Score:3)
Yeah, this isnt the first time I've seen a modern Christian mistake the moderation that comes with affluence for something their faith brought. They're off by almost 2000 years. I'm normally not one to have any problems with people's faith but this type of thing definitely comes off as ignorant and pretty arrogant.
Another way to look at it is modern wealthy Asian countries generally do a good job of looking after their poor and they're definitely not Christian majority.
Re: End of an era (Score:2)
Funny that, you also described the USA with your âoeunit of workâ definitionâ¦
Slashdot: Broken by design (Score:1, Troll)
So this is the comment that pissed off my recurring mod troll, who seems to be some kind of prosperity theology religious fundamentalist.
He (doubt a woman would have such a pathetic hobby) then went on to immediately mod down these other two unrelated comments:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Slashdot could easily detect this kind of behavior the same way I did, but they choose not to, because moderation is broken by design: It is intended to be abused.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. I know God is not popular on /., but one of the defining marks of Christianity, is we are all equal before God, King and Pauper.
In theory. In practice it is "do as I say, not as I do".
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Even though Russia dissolved their communist government, too many of the old guard remained in power. Whether it's now or 20 years down the road they'll eventually be dead and the country will move on.
You are assuming that there are no young people who will step in to fill the spots currently held by the current "old guard".
That may not be a valid assumption.
Re: End of an era (Score:3)
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You need to do a better job with your history of the region. Pre-USSR / CCCP, there were some small bright spots with folks such as Katherine the Great, but for the most part most of the region was, and still is uninhabited / sparsely populated wilderness. During Soviet rule they had a series of paranoid dictators that plunged the country deeper and deeper into despair. Post-soviet rule, the common folks *hated* what Gorbachev had done. He had a bold, ambitious, plan to modernize the country both econom
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That's not exactly the old guard anymore. The USSR dissolved about 30 years ago. And considering that the USSR chose its leaders from an even more geriatric stock than the US does today, none of these people is still alive.
But as the old Soviet saying goes, Lenin is dead but his cause lives on (with the implied joke of "I wish it was the other way around"), the idea of some great Russian empire is far from dead. I can't help but be reminded of Germany about a century ago. Germany, much like Russia, was an e
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And on the other side we have Trump and his followers.
Who claims that the election was stolen on his watch with no evidence and yet expects the fools to vote him in again because he's crying like a poor sport. Amazingly it seems to be working.
Sorry but I think we were fools to think the sanity after WWII would last. If there was sanity...
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Well, it lasted for as long as there were sufficient people who actually remembered it.
When that generation faded away, so did the memories.
Tasked with identifying threats to the Internet... (Score:2)
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Either you implement them or you will be executed, I think you got that pretty right.
Re: Tasked with identifying threats to the Interne (Score:2)
Russia's leadership: "...we need more people to work in the gulag slave camps"
Russia's IT: "we got this"
Re: (Score:2)
Russia's leadership: You better, because else you'll fill that quota.
In Stalinist Russia, one of the quotas a district had to fulfill was the quota for prisoners. I hope that changed by now.
You know what strikes me as funny? (Score:1)
That the same people who lament about censorship and how they are repressed (mostly because they can't repress others anymore with impunity) are considering Russia the shining example of how it should be.
I wonder what they'd say if anything close to that shitshow happened around here.
Re: (Score:3)
Have you not been following politics? Seriously. One example is, about once a week we have a new "think of the children law". Another is that you don't own the products you buy. The right to repair? How about the right to own.
It's happening here on a different level. There is even talk of passing legislation that would oblige companies to give access to encrypted communications or devices.
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I wonder what they'd say if anything close to that shitshow happened around here.
It depends on if they are personally censored/harmed or not. At first it sounds hypocritical but actually it's consistent: they're just very self-centered in their worldview.
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Care to point out how that's not hypocritical when their lament about "unfairness" basically means "someone gets something and it ain't me". That's not unfair, that's just greed and egoism in disguise.
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So it ain't hypocritical if they claim persecution for not being able to slander and persecute others?
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I didn't know the US had a queen now. And I certainly didn't know that it was one of these bozos.
Let's see them block SoftEther (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the most annoying to block VPN protocol out there:
https://www.softether.org/ [softether.org]
Re: Let's see them block SoftEther (Score:2)
What makes it so annoying?
Re: (Score:3)
I thought this statement from their website was quite funny:
SoftEther VPN has strong resistance against firewalls than ever. Built-in NAT-traversal penetrates your network admin's troublesome firewall for overprotection. You can setup your own VPN server behind the firewall or NAT in your company, and you can reach to that VPN server in the corporate private network from your home or mobile place, without any modification of firewall settings. Any deep-packet inspection firewalls cannot detect SoftEther VPN
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Is this actually a useful feature in a country that is going down the road of making itself the trusted root CA?
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
If they can force everybody to use their special browser or install a trusted root cert, they can set themselves up as a man in the middle and just block anything on standard the HTTPS port that they can
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Tor uses similar techniques, but they are only really effective when using servers that are camouflaged as well. Microsoft Azure cloud servers are favourites.
200 email services? (Score:1)
I wonder which ones...