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Russia Blocks Encrypted Email Provider ProtonMail (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Russia has told internet providers to enforce a block against encrypted email provider ProtonMail, the company's chief has confirmed. The block was ordered by the state Federal Security Service, formerly the KGB, according to a Russian-language blog, which obtained and published the order after the agency accused the company and several other email providers of facilitating bomb threats. Several anonymous bomb threats were sent by email to police in late January, forcing several schools and government buildings to evacuate.
In all, 26 internet addresses were blocked by the order, including several servers used to scramble the final connection for users of Tor, an anonymity network popular for circumventing censorship. Internet providers were told to implement the block "immediately," using a technique known as BGP blackholing, a way that tells internet routers to simply throw away internet traffic rather than routing it to its destination. But the company says while the site still loads, users cannot send or receive email. The way the KGB blocked ProtonMail is "particularly sneaky," ProtonMail chief executive Andy Yen said. "ProtonMail is not blocked in the normal way, it's actually a bit more subtle. They are blocking access to ProtonMail mail servers. So Mail.ru -- and most other Russian mail servers -- for example, is no longer able to deliver email to ProtonMail, but a Russian user has no problem getting to their inbox."
"That's because the two ProtonMail servers listed by the order are its back-end mail delivery servers, rather than the front-end website that runs on a different system," adds TechCrunch.
In all, 26 internet addresses were blocked by the order, including several servers used to scramble the final connection for users of Tor, an anonymity network popular for circumventing censorship. Internet providers were told to implement the block "immediately," using a technique known as BGP blackholing, a way that tells internet routers to simply throw away internet traffic rather than routing it to its destination. But the company says while the site still loads, users cannot send or receive email. The way the KGB blocked ProtonMail is "particularly sneaky," ProtonMail chief executive Andy Yen said. "ProtonMail is not blocked in the normal way, it's actually a bit more subtle. They are blocking access to ProtonMail mail servers. So Mail.ru -- and most other Russian mail servers -- for example, is no longer able to deliver email to ProtonMail, but a Russian user has no problem getting to their inbox."
"That's because the two ProtonMail servers listed by the order are its back-end mail delivery servers, rather than the front-end website that runs on a different system," adds TechCrunch.
It's OK. Putin said it was fine. He's the best!
- Donnie
I don't respond to AC's.
"ProtonMail is not blocked in the normal way, it's actually a bit more subtle. They are blocking access to ProtonMail mail servers. So Mail.ru -- and most other Russian mail servers -- for example, is no longer able to deliver email to ProtonMail, but a Russian user has no problem getting to their inbox."
So, basically, Russians can still send and recieve encrypted email no problem .... they just can't send it to Russian mail servers.
Wtf is the point of that? Trying to drive their own email providers out of business? Or is it just a really silly oversight?
Is it still 1991?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
All the open protocols (web, email, news) are relics from the internet's academic roots. ...Secure open protocols ...Widely adopted
We're going to need new protocols hardened against increasingly illiberal western states.
Yeah, the internet is fucking toast. It was nice while it lasted.
Tor, an anonymity network popular for circumventing censorship.
LOL. come on guys, at least be realistic, Tor is for hiding your identity, it can also be used to circumvent censorship but that is hardly the common use.
Since I have an unlimited number of backdoored cipher & hashing algorithms, and these governments would actually value my work.
Then we just stage some stunt claiming that NSA has backdoored RSA, etc. NIST ciphers and hashes -- or simply demonstrate the proof that prime numbers leave signatures of their harmonic footprint in the modulo bit field, and all such crypto is now useless. And then introduce a new cipher standard with new backdoors in place. Then all the plebs can go back to thinking their shit is secure -- like they do now, since they don't know the trick of how prime numbers were the weakness in their previous cipher standards.
Putin has said we should place a backdoor in the encryption ciphers if it isn't too much of a burden. Today's encryption systems are all weak against some interesting tricks I know (and have been for the duration of their use), might as well be considered to have backdoors AFAICT. So put down all the bullshit arguments about "if you put in a backdoor, then bad guys will get them too". First off, you don't know shit about the surveillance system, we can find those guys before they spill the beans. Secondly, your shit is already backdoored, I mean, you even wait until NSA has tweaked (weakened / backdoored) the algorithms you use before NIST approves them and they become industry standard -- so fuck of with those pointless arguments, your shit's is fucked, and you don't care about privacy or else you'd be more interested in the use of Radar to track everything everywhere always.
Doesn't the traitor Snowden use protonmail?
Does this mean he has been cut off from the rest of the world by his overlord?
If true, that is just funny.
The foot soldiers of electronic fascism. We have to get around this shit!
Russian parliament passed new laws to punish people for 'spreading fake news' and for insulting government officials, national symbols, history, etc.
Basically it is now illegal to do any investigative journalism based on this law because the moment you say anything about anything you can be immediately, based on a complaint from anybody actually, without any court order (no court order will be required even though in Russia courts are completely useless, bought and paid for, under complete 100% control of the government and of putin) be blocked, fined, thrown to prison.
No court order is required and the information can (and must be) immediately blocked (by all local Russian ISPs), no court order is required and a person can be fined (there is a progressive scale of fines, repeat offenders also get higher and higher fines), no court order is required but a person can be thrown into prison.
The only way to fight this in Russia is to completely disregard this law, however I believe many people will self censor instead.
You can't handle the truth.
"Donnie" has done a million things to piss off Russia since the election, if Donald and he were ever friends that terminated the moment he became president. Even if "Donnie" has pretended to work with Russia he obviously played them for rubes...
Further proof that "Donnie" is the shrewdest man alive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In Putin's Russia, email blocks you!
The Russian intelligence services in general and Vladimir Putin in particular are no strangers to best practices of security. They have blocked ProtonMail because they know that it's cryptographically secure and they have little chance of compromising the physical security of the servers in Switzerland, which are located in a underground ex-military bunker. This should be taken as evidence that ProtonMail security is genuine and indeed a threat to authoritarian regimes everywhere.
I love it when small minded dictators get lazy and raise awareness of their failing instincts to control, which always... always end up backfiring. I'm opening a new account with ProtonMail today.
Thanks Vlad!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
news:
'Russia's parliament has passed two bills outlawing "disrespect" of authorities and the spreading of what the government deems to be "fake news".
The first ban refers to "blatant disrespect" of the state, its officials and Russian society, and repeat offenders face up to 15 days in jail. '
Basically same assholes as usa, just different methods cause they don't need to pretend to be 'democratic' - what a joke word that is. In USA you lose your job and money related things and are isolated quickly if you talk bad about 'your boss'. Its almost like, there is 'no difference' - its only 'appearance of difference'. Assholes function the same everywhere! And they manipulate and hide behind empty words.
illegal to "misgender" a tranny in the uk
j00s trying to make criticism of israhell illegal in the us
gonna say anything about that? what would (((von mises))) say about it, cucko?
In other news, Proton Mail users are enjoying surprisingly lower rates of spam this morning.
The block was ordered by the state Federal Security Service, formerly the KGB, according to a Russian-language blog, which obtained and published the order after the agency accused the company and several other email providers of facilitating bomb threats. Several anonymous bomb threats were sent by email to police in late January, forcing several schools and government buildings to evacuate.
If the police were able to read the threats were those emails actually encrypted and the encryption broken by the police?
A crackdown on the open Internet in Russia continues unabated. Soon, RosKomNadzor will introduce state issued mandatory SSL certificates for opening websites and forbid all the instant messengers which sport unbreakable encryption. Yes, they failed banning Telegram but it was only because there's no law to deal with fast moving targets - Durov revamped the entire servers network and logging in process to allow the Russians to communicate past the prohibition introduced last year.
It's the fourth such news piece in the last several months. Also most western media neglected the protests in regard to the Internet in Russia which happened just two days ago. It's still astonishing how few people participated. Looks like Putin has truly become the Tsar of The Grand Duchy of Moscow and the people are content with each atrocity he does. A dictator, a tyrant, Godfather of the Russian mafia state.
There is a reason why to fear the Chinese and Huawei as Russia has demonstrated here. Socialist want total control over knowledge about you and yours. They don't want you to have any privacy out of fear. Socialist's fear has gripped America since 9/11 and it is causing the lose of privacy that is beyond the imagination of most people.
Imagine this scenario: You find out that a major social company is committing a felony. While you know it so do they know that you know it because they are monitoring every persons communications. The CEO, let's call him Mikey Zuckerbreg wants to eliminate you. He knows you better than you do. He knows where you go every day by cell phone towers (only to get more precise with 5G), the location of your children all day long, what they eat and where, even what they were and the design and color of their clothes ( you bought them online or EVEN in a retail outlet store). So, Mikey says, "Grab a kid and threaten you to keep quiet". What do you do? Evil companies are bad but it gets worse.
The governments can gain ALL of this information with a warrant. Since 9/11 a secret warrant under the FISA courts ( Socialist Americans learned this one from the Nazis and KGB). No one knows what the government has gotten about you and your family. You just disappear. Another missing child, young adult, or your parents.
If you don't believe ANY of this is happening today you don't know China or Russia. It is real. And it is happening. By adding more information into Russia's arsenal to spy on all people of the world the less freedom we have.
So, what probably happened is that the russians that wanted the service blocked, used it to send anonymous bomb threats?
Plausible. And with the Americans doing similar in comments (FCC net neutrality) I would not be surprised.
This is 100% hypocritical considering 99.99% of the spam accounts created on my servers are using mail.ru and yandex accounts.
Obviously, the goal here to make a link between FSB and the soviet era KGB, just in case if there are people who don't think that FSB is not evil enough. I don't understand why this is necessary considering that FSB has built itself a pretty fearsome reputation in the post-Soviet era. I think that constantly pointing out that FSB is the new KGB is stupid. For one, KGB combined both foreign and domestic intelligence functions of USSR, while FSB is primarily a domestic intelligence agency (the Russian agency for foreign intelligence is SVR and GRU). While some functions between FSB and SVR overlap, it is mostly the people inside of Russia who should fear FSB. Another major difference between soviet KGB and Russian FSB is the extent of corruption inside FSB which is rumored to be involved in all sorts of malicious activity like extortion racket, taxation racket, or protection rackets involving private businesses. There is evidence that someone inside FSB might have been involved in smuggling cocaine. (https://www.rferl.org/a/argentina-russia-cocaine-plot-suspect-extradited-from-germany-jailed-in-moscow/29399251.html) Whine many evil deeds were ascribed to the soviet KGB, the corruption and all sorts of economic side businesses were not among those.
Been thinking about getting some kind of encrypted email and move off the "normal" email providers.
That russia banned protonmail is a good endorsement for the product. I may go with them. If a totalitarian hates it is must be good!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
IMHO, encrypted email & internet browsing are things which general public do not really need (& they are actually against common good of general public)!!!
Because, IMHO, general public is NOT really obsessed about privacy (unlike some self-appointed "Privacy Advocates" always try to portray) & general public is actually quite okay w/ law enforcement checking their communications, when they are searching for criminal activities & people!!!
IMHO, the people who are really want/need encrypted email & internet browsing are the people who do illegal activities!!!
IMHO, encrypted email & internet browsing are are actually against common good of general public, because of they are protecting criminals from law enforcement!!!
IMHO, all encrypted email & internet browsing services/websites should/must be banned, in all countries in the world, permanently!!!
How am I gonna correspond with all those beautiful Russian brides now ??
Black hole mails you.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
no surprise that any contry like russia or now (thank God) the USA that tries to protect itself from radical islamic terrorists who use tools like encrypted email to attack suddenly find themselves the targets of radical leftists like you. PATHETIC. if it weresnt for hating Trump and Putin, what you losers have left?
think of it this way. when you use ProtonMail, you are given warm fuzzies right in the feels that your data is somehow specially encrypted, using "trust us" propietary crytpo wrapped up with an animation of a lock closing. meanwhile, the FBI's NSL and the NSA's bulk wiretap FISA warrant for "all Tangible Things" is given to the Legal Counsel of ProtonMail, and he is not even allowed to tell anyone else at ProtonMail that It's Happening.
but when you use Yandex or Mail.ru or any of Russia's email providers, when the FBI comes knocking, the Russian's tell the FBI to take a flying fuck off a short pier. and when NSA comes port knocking, they have to tip toe very, very cawfuwee, because if Russia notices the NSA has breached a domestic Russian email provider, that sets up NSA to get burnt by a dangle, get disinfo'd, get hacked back or worse. so NSA only stock piles its penetration access into Russia for Very Important SIGINT. your dick pix do not meet that threshold, unless your name is Jeff Bezos, so your privacy is assured because you are low hanging fruit in the grand scheme of the Intl Espionage tree.
the choice is obvious. any American who wants to protect their own privacy would be wise to use Russian email providers and totally ignore US based email providers.
By order of Ukrainian president, Ukraine providers block russian social networks site. Freedom of speech is censored in Ukraine. Why there are no news on that censorship?