Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Blackmoore on Thursday December 04 2014, @11:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the great-firewall-of-rus dept.

Russia has blocked access to GitHub after finding a text file in a repository entitled 'suicide.txt'. Surely this is pretext for Russia's continuing move towards isolation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692584

Techcrunch has Russia Blacklists, Blocks GitHub Over Pages That Refer To Suicide

Developers in Russia are putting up their feet today — that is, after they have finished stomping around in frustration for a little while. It’s emerged that Russia’s regulator RosComNadzor has blocked GitHub after the popular software and coding collaboration platform was found to be hosting content related to suicide — specifically, see this file that details 32 ways to kill yourself.

The “block” effectively amounts to an order to ISPs to restrict access to the site. And because GitHub works on HTTPS, providers can only comply by restricting access to the entire site, rather than individual pages. According to Russian blog Meduza, several leading ISPs have already complied with the order, including Beeline, MTS, MGTS and Megafon.

The block reignites the debate over how Russia’s government decides what is and what is not appropriate Internet content for people in Russia. The country’s firewall, when it was originally raised in 2012, was controversial not only because of concerns that it would be used against freedom of speech (especially in cases when that speech was critical of the state), but also because it was deemed to be too heavy-handed in how it would get implemented.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday December 05 2014, @05:51PM

    by Geotti (1146) on Friday December 05 2014, @05:51PM (#122977) Journal

    Maybe they don't allow that either?

    Who, the company? I hope that you don't seriously believe that VPNs are (or can be) blanket blocked in Russia, because if you do, you're wrong.

    Lots of those devs don't have bosses.

    This one -apparently- has one ;)

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 05 2014, @07:18PM

    by frojack (1554) on Friday December 05 2014, @07:18PM (#122998) Journal

    Who, the company?

    No the authorities.

    I hope that you don't seriously believe that VPNs are (or can be) blanket blocked in Russia, because if you do, you're wrong.

    Is Russia so hopelessly behind the times that they can't manage to block VPNs? [wikipedia.org] Maybe they can get some help from the Chinese or Iranians. They have the process down pat.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Saturday December 06 2014, @04:24PM

      by Geotti (1146) on Saturday December 06 2014, @04:24PM (#123222) Journal

      From your own Wikipedia link:

      as the Chinese government began using deep packet inspection to identify VPN protocols, Golden Frog began scrambling OpenVPN packet metadata for its popular VyprVPN service in an attempt to avoid detection.

      (Here's the product page, btw: http://www.goldenfrog.com/vyprvpn/chameleon [goldenfrog.com] .)

      Also, you can use steganographic tunnels (also linked to from your link), and here's some more practical advice (that beats DPI used by golden shield):
      http://www.greycoder.com/how-hide-vpn-connections/ [greycoder.com]

      Also, well, just use an SSH tunnel.

      To answer your question, Frojack, apparently it is you, who's hopelessly behind.

      One can't reliably block VPNs short of unplugging the net or switching to a carefully vetted whitelist, same as one can't reliably use copy-protection mechanisms for music/software/etc, just that in this case, governments have to beat the encryption and not the users.