Russia is already actively blocking VPNs both by restricting access to the servers and by blocking the UDP ports used by the VPNs. There is no solution except to choose the ports that are untouched yet or by using a VPS as a proxy. Going the TCP route cripples the maximum speed, so the ban is effective in forcing Russians to give up and connect directly.
Some VPNs use ports 443 or 80 which won’t be blocked. There’s also some which disguise the traffic to appear as HTTPS. It’s a cat and mouse game but I don’t see the cat winning.
Russia already has national root TLS certificate that’s must installed on all devices (basically government-mandated MITM). The next step is to start severely throttling (and optionally blocking) TLS connections that don’t use it. Some popular foreign sites like Google can remain functional by replacing their certificate at ISP level (all ISPs are already controlled by the government).
bruh what are you talking about, there are indeed national root certs but that’s purely for Sberbank and similar government sites, I wouldn’t put it past them to go further but we’re a loooooong way off
Yeah… Russians are known for their ability to reverse engineer and circumvent protections of all sorts… For good and bad…
I’m pretty sure it won’t take long before there are easy ways to circumvent whatever VPN blocking Putin invests in…
Russia is already actively blocking VPNs both by restricting access to the servers and by blocking the UDP ports used by the VPNs. There is no solution except to choose the ports that are untouched yet or by using a VPS as a proxy. Going the TCP route cripples the maximum speed, so the ban is effective in forcing Russians to give up and connect directly.
Some VPNs use ports 443 or 80 which won’t be blocked. There’s also some which disguise the traffic to appear as HTTPS. It’s a cat and mouse game but I don’t see the cat winning.
It’s the kind of game where nobody wins.
Russia already has national root TLS certificate that’s must installed on all devices (basically government-mandated MITM). The next step is to start severely throttling (and optionally blocking) TLS connections that don’t use it. Some popular foreign sites like Google can remain functional by replacing their certificate at ISP level (all ISPs are already controlled by the government).
bruh what are you talking about, there are indeed national root certs but that’s purely for Sberbank and similar government sites, I wouldn’t put it past them to go further but we’re a loooooong way off