Slashdot Mirror
Inside the Great Firewall of China's Tor Blocking
Trailrunner7 writes with an article at Threat Post about China's ability to block Tor. From the article: "The much-discussed Great Firewall of China is meant to prevent Chinese citizens from getting to Web sites and content that the country's government doesn't approve of, and it's been endowed with some near-mythical powers by observers over the years. But it's somewhat rare to get a look at the way that the system actually works in practice. Researchers at Team Cymru got just that recently when they were asked by the folks at the Tor Project to help investigate why a user in China was having his connections to a bridge relay outside of China terminated so quickly. Not only is China able to identify Tor sessions, it can do so in near real-time and then probe the Tor bridge relay and terminate the session within a couple of minutes."
Clearly they're one of the best software engineers in the world when they want to, being capable of real-time packet inspection and probing. China has over 1.7 billion people who almost all want to work in IT. They will rule the world.
Care to name some? Many free public proxy servers are banned, and the paid ones are expensive enough, such that the masses cannot afford it.
VPN access exists as long as the Chinese government allows it to exist. If they can probe and whack TOR, that shows they can whack anything - and that they choose not to.
Note that some sites in China do actively block VPN connections.
Tor has to connect to so-called "dictionary servers" periodically to refresh its list of tor nodes to try to use. If you block those servers, tor breaks.
At least, that's how it worked when they finally figured out how to block it after 3 years. Maybe tor has improved since then.
Does this mean people should start tunnelling their Tor connexions through SSH, at this point?
Bugged planet indeed, I wonder if any of our lovely "free world" companies like Amesys or Siemens are selling the DPI gear, or if China is using a fully homebaked solution.
And if so, does it run (Red Flag) Linux, obviously.
No wit here.
If we learned more about how they detect the tor session, couldn't we obfuscate the data to combat detection?
I mean, encrypted data stands out from normal traffic like a sore thumb, and unless the user is a bank, transacting large amounts of it puts up a red flag. But, what if we obfuscated the data so that it looks like ordinary unencrypted/uncoded data?
FreeNet would have been a better choice i think. harder to track down who is running it. Tho not impossible.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
for helping us build more robust Tor protocols
Oh, you thought you were going to actually kill the average Chinese citizen's desire for free access to information? You didn't understand that a stronger Tor protocol or something even better than Tor is the actual result of your escalation of the arms race?
You're pretty ignorant about basic human nature, aren't you, you authoritarian assholes.
Oh, and btw you grumpy old shitbags:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/world/asia/chinas-president-pushes-back-against-western-culture.html
The reason you are lamenting the influence of Western culture on China, and not basking in pride at the influence of Chinese culture on the West, is because YOU CENSOR EVERYTHING IN YOUR CULTURE. So Chinese Culture is hobbled and decimated. Because you think you can control, nevermind why you think you should control, Chinese thought. Instead of a great big strong tree, you have a demented little broken bush. Because of YOUR efforts at preventing Chinese culture from growing, by censoring everything, you morons
You ignorant controlling douchebags. Your average Chinese citizen understands this, why don't you you stupid old and decrepit paranoid control freaks?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Tor exit node based blocking has been used on various IRC servers to combat abuse for years and years now, The chinese might be doing something more fancy, but that only shows that they didn't go for the fairly easy and quick solution.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I won't name any, advertisement for it are common if you surf popular websites from Panda Land. But I can tell you that yes, it's not for free, but no, it's not expensive, affordable for a Chinese city dweller level of income (8 USD for 6 months, about 50 RMB, which is the price of cinema ticket without the popcorn bucket).
Freenet and I2P both serve their purpose. None of them serve the same purpose as Tor. Tor lets you connect to the normal Internet so you can view your normal web comics, visit CIA information gathering honey-pots like Facebook and so forth. Freenet and I2P are designed for hidden internal traffic in those networks. Sure, you can share a file on Freenet, but you can not visit your favorite news website. Different tools for different jobs.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
For those unfamiliar with the concept "face", it's the social equivalent of getting modded -1
I get it, we all do (or at least I hope). But do you really think that the Chinese government reads /.? We can hope, but sheesh if world leaders can't get them to open up why would they listen to someone vent on /. and say "Eureka! He's on to something!"
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I tell you, free speech and freedom in general in America is doomed. The NDAA2012 combined with SOPA is just another brick in the wall on the path towards a completely tyrannical fascist government. Some Americans argue that the USA is there already. Today we are talking about Tor being blocked by the Great Firewall of China. How long will it take before we are talking about the Great Firewall of the USA blocking websites, software like Tor, I2P, Freenet and so on? Beware that western corporations like Intel, Cisco, Nokia and Siemens are the ones who are delivering the technology used by countries like China. The US and the west already has this technology. I do not see it as a question of if but when these technologies will be used in the US and other "free" western countries. The Tor project should be supported. Why people in other countries need it today may be why you need it tomorrow.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Ultimately, FreeNet is more about publishing 'sites' than sharing files ( tho i agree it can do both ), and if we waned to help out our oppressed brothers, we would mirror 'outside' sites on FreeNet. Even setup auto run scripts to do it.
And while its not been done yet, i don't see a technical obstacle why a "gateway" couldn't be created that sucks in outside data and inserts it into FreeNet, on demand. I also don't see it compromising security, except for the guy(s) running the gateway, in a presumed free country. Once its inserted, its just as secure as any other traffic.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I have no idea why you are on a tangent accusing someone else of wanting censorship. The point was that your rant (now two of them) is being directed at technical people in the US, not the Chinese Government.
How about writing mean letters to the Chinese Government, or getting involved in Politics instead of ranting here on /.?
Trust me, personally I'm not for anything that China does. With out of control IP laws, rampant corruption, and pay-for-politics in the US we have a shitload to worry about at home. With things like SB1867 being passed on 1/31/11 by our President, and now the big push for SOPA we are on our way to becoming a whole like like them.
Oh.. one more thing.. The US Government will not censor anything like you mentioned. What better way of distracting people from the fucked up shit they are doing than to spoon feed people stuff like that?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This seems a bit obvious... does anybody know how much luck folks have had with this method?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
So if they can inspect in real time, is it possible that them letting the connection go for a few minutes means they are collecting the tor bridges data, and other data like exit points before they terminate?
Conversely, if you can access global information from within China and its still just a blacklist of IPs, then a VPN can always get through.
the grass mud horse ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The countries bordering china are generally not good choices for where you'd route your connectivity... Some of them even use china for connectivity themselves. And the border region with some countries is either very sparsely populated, or filled with mountains that would block your wifi signal.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
It used to be that firewalls and filters would search out malicious connections attempting spam or attacks and drop them. But in Soviet China, it's the opposite. So disguise any connections to Falun Gong website as spam or worse, and they GFW will be sure to let it through.
Using a VPN service advertised on popular websites seems akin to buying drugs from a guy who advertises at the local police station.
Dilbert RSS feed
Those "sites" are still just static files; you're not establishing a connection to the original server to view them, just accessing what was pushed into other peers.
You could push data from the web into FN, obviously, but you can't simply proxy it.
Dilbert RSS feed
Why does all this remind me of the province of Quebec? Hmm.
As with any war, maneuvers lead to counter maneuvers. Escalation leads to further escalation. The only way to end a war is either by choice (as we did in Vietnam and now in Afghanistan), out maneuvering your enemy (siege of Stalingrad, battle of the Bulge), or if the enemy destroys its own credibility with the people (Iraq insurgency movement).
So good going China, you've managed to shut down TOR. I'm sure you have shared your successes with other "Great Firewall" regimes and those who desire "Great Firewall" status. But those who created TOR gained legitimacy, so they will be back with better weapons and in greater numbers.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
For those unfamiliar with the concept "face", it's the social equivalent of getting modded -1
So what happens when you lose Facebook? It's been so long since I logged in, I've forgotten how. Does that mean I get modded -1000000000?
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."