China beefs up Great Firewall, snips off VPN access

Discussion in 'privacy problems' started by Minimalist, Jan 24, 2015.

  1. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/24/china_beefs_up_great_firewall_snips_off_vpn_access
     
  2. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    I'm wondering how the various approaches for getting Tor and VPNs through are working, and which are not. Tor uses various transports, such as obfsproxy (now with obfs3) and most recently (I think) meek. Using meek, traffic is obfuscated and routed through arbitrary third-party sites. Some VPNs use haggismn's XOR patch for OpenVPN. Others provide access via SSH, Stunnel (SSL) and/or obfsproxy (obfs3). I presume that any approach developed for Tor could be used with VPNs.
     
  3. Palancar

    Palancar Registered Member

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    One of the major issues will be that "Chinese Gov" will be reading here too, and likely alot. If a solution becomes well established it also becomes a major target. Just wondering if IVPN and AirVpn are still making it through. I am not in China so I can't determine the status. o_Oo_Oo_Oo_O
     
  4. JRViejo

    JRViejo Super Moderator

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  5. Palancar

    Palancar Registered Member

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    And yet I have seen absolutely nothing on the forums/support for the major ones we recommend here, or that I am using.
     
  6. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Well, you don't see support tickets, and that's where Chinese users are probably asking.
     
  7. pajenn

    pajenn Registered Member

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    the VPN I normally use in China has continued to work work well - I have it on basically all the time on my laptop and android phone. I also subscribe to a second VPN, which has some kind of stealth VPN settings to get around the Great Firewall of China, but it never worked well for me here, so instead I just use the first VPN and then the second one (in normal mode) via a virtual machine when I download torrents because the second one seems to be more torrent friendly. i don't use Tor very much because it's slow - not sure if it still works here, but I'll try it later.
     
  8. Palancar

    Palancar Registered Member

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    Some of the great reputation VPNs have dedicated member forums, and I am seeing nothing in there. Watching daily and nothing being discussed.
     
  9. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    I noticed that Torguard had beefed up its stealth VPNs and updated its client software for getting through the GFC last time I logging in the administrative console.
     
  10. pajenn

    pajenn Registered Member

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    Tried Tor this morning, and it's not working for me at the moment. Of course, I could always run it if I use VPN first and then Tor inside a VM, or even VPN1 -> Tor -> VPN2... Anyway, the blocking here tends to be spotty, for example, sometimes my gmail works, a lot of times it does not work, so Tor might also sometimes work and sometimes not, or it might with other ISP's or it might be possible to use an advanced configuration to make it work.
     
  11. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    China Censors VPNs To Protect Great Firewall, But Some Manage To Get Through
    http://www.ibtimes.com/china-censors-vpns-protect-great-firewall-some-manage-get-through-1802938

     
  12. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    Learning more about the GFW's active probing system
    https://blog.torproject.org/blog/learning-more-about-gfws-active-probing-system
     
  13. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    I know of three open-source obfuscation apps: SSH, SSL/stunnel and obfsproxy. There's also an obfuscation patch for OpenVPN. And some VPN services use proprietary/closed-source methods.

    I wonder which one works best.
     
  14. Cutting_Edgetech

    Cutting_Edgetech Registered Member

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    I have heard Boleh VPN works well for China. They use their own obfuscation method with Open VPN last time I checked.
     
  15. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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