9 ms·

A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns

255 points by znano 1y ago

naryJane 1y ago
I appreciate the final paragraphs which suggest a solid method for those inside the country and under this oppressive regime to remain connected without surveillance. I wonder how many are up to this, and what active resistance or movements inside the country look like these days.
- justusthane 1y ago
  Does it, though? It doesn’t mention whether or not hosting your own encrypted messaging platform is illegal, what the repercussions are, or how to hide that you are doing so. I found the whole article to be unfortunately light on both technical details and practical details, and certainly wouldn’t suggest that anyone use it as a guide.
  - Vulturus 1y ago
    I was wondering myself, if it isn't very dangerous to host those kinds of services in an opressive state such as Iran? Hosting a site on Iranian IPs certainly sounds easy to track and I'm sure a Starlink receiver also makes substential RF noise. Anyone has any information about how likely is the Iranian government is to shut down such a site/service? Also, doesn't encrypted traffic in general (like Matrix servers) fall into this category?
  - immibis 1y ago
    > whether or not hosting your own encrypted messaging platform is illegal Matrix isn't meaningfully encrypted, so it's mostly irrelevant, hooray!
- joecool1029 1y ago
  Synapse sucks to run and it doesn't minimize metadata collection. It's not a great choice unless you're running it outside the country where they can't seize the server (but then you have all the problems of not being able to access it when the country is cut off from the rest of the world). It's a pig on resources which means it has to be run on hardware that can handle it, barely runs on SBC's. Other stuff is weird in their post and suggests they are speaking for Iranians without actually knowing any online. I know a few from the Cellmapper community and SMS is very much not expensive. 1000 SMS costs around 0.03USD worst case: https://irancell.ir/en/p/3771/tariffs-and-voice-packages-en https://irancell.ir/en/p/3771/tariffs-and-voice-packages-en Finally it's not really that Starlink uses proprietary encryption that's special. They can use any sort of common encryption standard and there's not much Iran can do but locate and seize the terminal since they don't have the keys to it. I imagine at some point they were start looking for signal emissions in known Starlink bands and use that to locate terminals. Allegedly Russia has a detection system 'Kalinka' already built: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/tech/russia-and-china-are-threatening-spacexs-starlink-satellite-constellation-new-report-finds https://www.space.com/space-exploration/tech/russia-and-chin...
  - znano 1y ago
    It's better than SMS, isn't it? In these situations perfection is not viable.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  > I wonder how many are up to this, and what active resistance or movements inside the country look like these days. Hard to find that out, as I can imagine outlets like HN are actively monitored as well - if an Iranian account would be like "hello I am in the resistance movement", they'd be painting a target on themselves. But the US is heading this way too if I may put on my conspiracy thinking hat; "we" already knew, but the Snowden leaks confirmed that the NSA and co are inside all of the major internet companies, probably including Starlink. When the shit hits the fan, it is us techy internet peoples' responsibility to ensure information continues to flow freely, be it through access to information (like these local portable wifi network devices that have a small internet full of knowledge like Wikipedia pages), communication (the Matrix servers mentioned in the article), and communication to the outside world. On that note, what would be the next option if for example the US cut itself off of the global internet and Starlink? Ham radio / whispernet? I mean I'm pretty confident that at the moment there's just too much freedom still for an internet shutdown to be viable, but having the knowledge is important nevertheless. ok conspiracy hat off. Disclaimer, I don't live in the US, but my grandparents did live through WW2, during which people had secret radios because the Nazis confiscated all of them to try and keep people uninformed. The radios were essential for the resistance movements, with public BBC broadcasts containing secret messages informing the reistance of e.g. sabotage supply drops. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_resistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_resistance for a good starting point, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_during_World_War_II for the rest of Europe.
RiverCrochet 1y ago
I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. It's simply not going to be possible to meaningfully use the Internet unauthenticated and unapproved in a few years. Costs to reach mass audiences online will increase until only the big players can do it, and it'll be their platforms or nothing. There's going to be no room for anything that those with millions and billions of dollars don't want or can't make money off of in some way. Overall, this makes me want to reduce the role of the Internet and tech in my life. I don't need the fastest data plan, latest PC, newest phone, or whatever AI trend is hot to use the apps I need for daily life or to line up events and meetings with others that I actually know.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > more details on what the "National Information Network" is Some sources [0][1] > I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Yep. Along with an entire ecosystem of domestically created and regulated search engines, DPI, centrally managed certs, AV, networking backbone, etc. It's similar in intention to the Great Firewall in China, except much more restrictive. Imagine corporate IT restrictions and posture being deployed nationwide on all endpoints, that's how these kind of initiatives tend to architected. SSE/Zero Trust, DPI, Cert Mgmt, etc are all dual-use, and it's essentially a logistics and organization problem. [0] - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1107324.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1107324.pdf [1] - https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38316/The-National-Internet-AR-KA-final.pdf https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38316/The-...
- hexomancer 1y ago
  I wrote a blog post which hopefully clears up the "National Network": https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-internet-2025.html https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-interne... It is way more than just DNS.
ZoomZoomZoom 1y ago
> WireGuard uses UDP and a small handshake footprint, making detection and blocking via DPI harder. Not quite true. Wireguard is already actively detected and suppressed if necessary. There's already a fork that employs basic changes to improve the protocol in this regard. AmneziaWG was shown to be more robust to detection for now. https://docs.amnezia.org/documentation/amnezia-wg/ https://docs.amnezia.org/documentation/amnezia-wg/ Too bad managing WG is such a pain and Tailscale/Netbird don't support this protocol yet. The following two issues need attention: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/10696 https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/10696 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1096 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1096
- dongcarl 1y ago
  At Obscura we just tunnel WireGuard over QUIC's unreliable datagram mechanism to make it look like HTTP/3 (for DPI): https://github.com/Sovereign-Engineering/obscuravpn-client/blob/fae9cda990ff2b4296feed5e45cf99abddd63716/rustlib/src/quicwg.rs https://github.com/Sovereign-Engineering/obscuravpn-client/b... We just upstreamed our patch to quinn-rs that pads Datagrams to MTU: https://github.com/quinn-rs/quinn/pull/2274 https://github.com/quinn-rs/quinn/pull/2274
  - antonkochubey 1y ago
    Some DPIs just flat out block HTTP/3 already.
    - zinekeller 1y ago
      > Some DPIs just flat out block HTTP/3 already. Actually, some DPIs just straight-up reject UDP (and since DNS and NTP are UDP-based*, just straight-up interception-and-redirect). * TCP DNS exists but practically not used for most "normal" tasks, and at this point the censor is trying to block anything anyways.
- znano 1y ago
  True. but based on my researches don't use DPI on the NIN, so you might be able to use WG or OpenVpn on a VPS inside Iran but not to a VPS on let's say digital ocean. They can also selectively increase the or decrease the strength of their DPI as well, for example a range of IP can be graylisted and nothing will work on it, or they put more active probing effort on some ranges of IPs.
xkcd1963 1y ago
How do people do this in China?
- mohas 1y ago
  this is much more severe than in China. I've never been completely shut of Internet before. each time one of my servers had access to global Internet. this time no connection whatsoever. I hope people realise that encryption needs transmission, with no wire to transfer data encryption won't help you
- mmh0000 1y ago
  Shadowsocks is the common method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowsocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowsocks
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    This has been DPI'd to death in China and hasn't been useful in a while.
    - GardenLetter27 1y ago
      Trojan and X-ray still work though, albeit hosting is the issue there.
- ethan_smith 1y ago
  Chinese users typically rely on Shadowsocks (a SOCKS5 proxy designed to be undetectable), custom V2Ray configurations with obfuscation, or corporate VPNs that operate in legal gray areas, though the government continuously improves detection capabilities forcing constant adaptation of circumvention techniques.
  - znano 1y ago
    Also obfs4 i believe is widely used there, either with tor or standalone(obfs4 over SSH). And dynamic port forwarding using SSH alone is widely used and fairly simple.
heraldgeezer 1y ago
[flagged]
- pazimzadeh 1y ago
  Just enable configure terminal router bgp <your-AS-number> neighbor <neighbor-IP-address> no shutdown end Democracy restored.
heraldgeezer 1y ago
>SMS in Iran is unencrypted. SMS everywhere is unencrypted
- bawolff 1y ago
  Yes, although many people probably don't know the difference between SMS and RCS and use SMS to refer to both.
  - heraldgeezer 1y ago
    Even tech people? wowe
    - bawolff 1y ago
      You mean that group that still calls TLS SSL even though its been 26 years?
      - MangoToupe 1y ago
        The important part is its use. You could call it magic key negotiation and I wouldn't care. RCS and SMS are fundamentally different technologies in every way.
        bawolff 1y ago
        They are presented to the user in the same way. They serve the same function. From a user perspective, its about as different as http2 is from http1.1 or 3. (I.e. very different under the hood but not in a user visible way)
        heraldgeezer 1y ago
        Since when are we mere users? Job security for me I guess lol thanks
  - znano 1y ago
bawolff 1y ago
> IPv4 addresses are limited and constantly reallocated. Most are rented and passed between hosting providers, resold between datacenters, or migrated across regions. The Iranian filtering system uses GeoIP databases and BGP information to decide which IP ranges to trust and which to block. But those records lag behind the changes. This is surprising to me. Surely iranian ISPs would have directly allocated IP space? Or alternatively, surely Iran's gov would be in the routers and be able to blackhole any routes leaving the country?
- immibis 1y ago
  Are they sanctioned away from RIPE, like Russia is? Russia isn't allowed to be allocated any IP addresses they don't already have. They're Russia, so they already have a bunch, but if they didn't, they'd have to keep borrowing them on grey markets, possibly different ones each time. Iran might be that way. (Fun fact about sanctions: the International Criminal Court is sanctioned away from Microsoft, so they can't legally get access to Windows or Office. This is because they prosecuted a war criminal the USA likes.)
  - raron 1y ago
    > Fun fact about sanctions: the International Criminal Court is sanctioned away from Microsoft, so they can't legally get access to Windows or Office. How does that even work? There are many companies in the EU that (legally) sells second hand Windows and Office licenses to anyone.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- CaptainFever 1y ago
  I'm ignorant about this, but I'm surprised there isn't just some physical switch that just straight up airgaps all network routes going out of the country.
  - psnehanshu 1y ago
elternal_love 1y ago
If you are ever thinking of writing somethings like this: please be aware that people could be executed based upon the validity of your assumptions and advice offered.
- ogurechny 1y ago
  It certainly looks like it is compiled by a neural net or human that has no idea how people they talk about actually live. Places of actual discussion of censorship circumvention tools are full of much different talk on how to fool the external or internal DPI servers, on tunnelling through white-listed protocols, and so on. Also, those who can be executed like that have already realised that “safe” way of being a “good citizen” does not exist, it's a phantom for people who are — at the moment — rich, happy and walled from the rest (either physically or in their minds). They probably don't need to be told not to trust someone who is offering to solve all their problems.
- beefnugs 1y ago
  There is that iranian bot army we hear about: "dont write down knowledge or else someone somewhere will be executed!"
- znano 1y ago
  for what? nobody should follow anything blindly and im sure people in iran are more aware of this and they know how to take security precautions.
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    > for what? ? A totalitarian regime doesn't need much motivation to have people killed, to the point where even having knowledge or reading the wrong thing will have you put on a list.
    - znano 1y ago
      I don't think the islamic regime is that advanced intl wise to track every single movement on the internet. maybe true for US if it turns totalitarian one day. But i do agree that they want to do so, not denying that at all.
hed 1y ago
The Starlink gateway out is a good solution, but I sure wouldn't share it with friends/family over the ISP networks if at all possible.
- znano 1y ago
  It is possible, i found this tool for it: https://github.com/nasnet-community/neighbor-link https://github.com/nasnet-community/neighbor-link
kwar13 1y ago
Excellent write-up. Sadly Starlinks are also illegal and the gov has been cracking down on them.
- znano 1y ago
  Thanks, yeah but illegal usually don't mean unobtainable
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pazimzadeh 1y ago
Aren't mesh networks the ideal case for this type of scenario?
- znano 1y ago
  Yes they should work in these scenarios but requires mass adoption to run a proper mesh network infrastructure.
hexmiles 1y ago
How easy is detecting a transmitting starlink terminal? I assume is pretty easy but i don't know if the phased array antenna and beamforming make detecting from ground harder. Could i detect it with a SDR while driving around, wardriving-style?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
znano 1y ago
Also hosting technical wikis would be super useful (because there won't be any other way to use ChatGPT or google stuff), and efficient (storage wise) if deployed with kiwix
oaiey 1y ago
This "National Information Network" seems like a blueprint all countries should apply. While I also do not want to have a censored internet and I am a fan of international collaboration, Cyber Warfare is unfortunately common nowadays and turning a blind eye on protecting the fundamental services it is quite stupid.
- energy123 1y ago
  The status quo of allowing multiple foreign intelligence agencies to run unlimited information warfare needs disruption. Read about the Internet Research Agency. More informational borders between nations will give us the appetite for lower physical borders between nations.
  - AStonesThrow 1y ago
    [dead]
CommenterPerson 1y ago
[flagged]
- nemomarx 1y ago
  I would take some meddling from Europe around now, honestly.
- ksajadi 1y ago
  Because it might help us understand how the rest of the world works or how privileged a lot of us are in enjoying internet like we do or give us a better understanding of Iran the next time we see it on the news.
- os2warpman 1y ago
  >Why should we care how a country manages their internal affairs? The government of Iran supplies Russia with weapons used in their invasion of Ukraine, funds Houthi rebels who fire weapons indiscriminately at international shipping off the coast of Yemen, supplies terrorist groups in southern Lebanon, and advised the Syrian government during the Syrian Civil War which kicked off the greatest wave of human migration in recent history as people fled the brutality. By caring about their internal affairs there is a chance their external affairs may be influenced. Also, they execute rape victims, hang homosexuals in public, and kidnap and torture women who don't want to wear cloth on their head. Please, I'm begging you from the bottom of my heart, don't "buh whaddabow" me. It's pathetic.
  - CommenterPerson 1y ago
    Re. Whataboutism. At times it is worthwhile looking in the mirror. In 2003 we bombed and occupied Iraq based on fabrications and propaganda by the Bush administration. According to the Lancet, there were 650,000 excess deaths attributed to violence 95% confidence. The middle east was thrown into turmoil and the effects are very much being felt by neighboring countries and Europe. Sooo .. if we are curious about how other countries run their affairs, maybe we should study high school education in Finland. They did a remarkable job of turning their system around to where their kids outperform American kids on the average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_cas...
jollyllama 1y ago
Sounds like the NIN is just domestic sourcing for the infrastructure that it applies to.

255 points by znano 1y ago

I appreciate the final paragraphs which suggest a solid method for those inside the country and under this oppressive regime to remain connected without surveillance. I wonder how many are up to this, and what active resistance or movements inside the country look like these days.

justusthane 1y ago
Does it, though? It doesn’t mention whether or not hosting your own encrypted messaging platform is illegal, what the repercussions are, or how to hide that you are doing so. I found the whole article to be unfortunately light on both technical details and practical details, and certainly wouldn’t suggest that anyone use it as a guide.
- Vulturus 1y ago
  I was wondering myself, if it isn't very dangerous to host those kinds of services in an opressive state such as Iran? Hosting a site on Iranian IPs certainly sounds easy to track and I'm sure a Starlink receiver also makes substential RF noise. Anyone has any information about how likely is the Iranian government is to shut down such a site/service? Also, doesn't encrypted traffic in general (like Matrix servers) fall into this category?
- immibis 1y ago
  > whether or not hosting your own encrypted messaging platform is illegal Matrix isn't meaningfully encrypted, so it's mostly irrelevant, hooray!
joecool1029 1y ago
Synapse sucks to run and it doesn't minimize metadata collection. It's not a great choice unless you're running it outside the country where they can't seize the server (but then you have all the problems of not being able to access it when the country is cut off from the rest of the world). It's a pig on resources which means it has to be run on hardware that can handle it, barely runs on SBC's. Other stuff is weird in their post and suggests they are speaking for Iranians without actually knowing any online. I know a few from the Cellmapper community and SMS is very much not expensive. 1000 SMS costs around 0.03USD worst case: https://irancell.ir/en/p/3771/tariffs-and-voice-packages-en https://irancell.ir/en/p/3771/tariffs-and-voice-packages-en Finally it's not really that Starlink uses proprietary encryption that's special. They can use any sort of common encryption standard and there's not much Iran can do but locate and seize the terminal since they don't have the keys to it. I imagine at some point they were start looking for signal emissions in known Starlink bands and use that to locate terminals. Allegedly Russia has a detection system 'Kalinka' already built: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/tech/russia-and-china-are-threatening-spacexs-starlink-satellite-constellation-new-report-finds https://www.space.com/space-exploration/tech/russia-and-chin...
- znano 1y ago
  It's better than SMS, isn't it? In these situations perfection is not viable.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
> I wonder how many are up to this, and what active resistance or movements inside the country look like these days. Hard to find that out, as I can imagine outlets like HN are actively monitored as well - if an Iranian account would be like "hello I am in the resistance movement", they'd be painting a target on themselves. But the US is heading this way too if I may put on my conspiracy thinking hat; "we" already knew, but the Snowden leaks confirmed that the NSA and co are inside all of the major internet companies, probably including Starlink. When the shit hits the fan, it is us techy internet peoples' responsibility to ensure information continues to flow freely, be it through access to information (like these local portable wifi network devices that have a small internet full of knowledge like Wikipedia pages), communication (the Matrix servers mentioned in the article), and communication to the outside world. On that note, what would be the next option if for example the US cut itself off of the global internet and Starlink? Ham radio / whispernet? I mean I'm pretty confident that at the moment there's just too much freedom still for an internet shutdown to be viable, but having the knowledge is important nevertheless. ok conspiracy hat off. Disclaimer, I don't live in the US, but my grandparents did live through WW2, during which people had secret radios because the Nazis confiscated all of them to try and keep people uninformed. The radios were essential for the resistance movements, with public BBC broadcasts containing secret messages informing the reistance of e.g. sabotage supply drops. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_resistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_resistance for a good starting point, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_during_World_War_II for the rest of Europe.

RiverCrochet 1y ago

I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. It's simply not going to be possible to meaningfully use the Internet unauthenticated and unapproved in a few years. Costs to reach mass audiences online will increase until only the big players can do it, and it'll be their platforms or nothing. There's going to be no room for anything that those with millions and billions of dollars don't want or can't make money off of in some way. Overall, this makes me want to reduce the role of the Internet and tech in my life. I don't need the fastest data plan, latest PC, newest phone, or whatever AI trend is hot to use the apps I need for daily life or to line up events and meetings with others that I actually know.

alephnerd 1y ago
> more details on what the "National Information Network" is Some sources [0][1] > I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Yep. Along with an entire ecosystem of domestically created and regulated search engines, DPI, centrally managed certs, AV, networking backbone, etc. It's similar in intention to the Great Firewall in China, except much more restrictive. Imagine corporate IT restrictions and posture being deployed nationwide on all endpoints, that's how these kind of initiatives tend to architected. SSE/Zero Trust, DPI, Cert Mgmt, etc are all dual-use, and it's essentially a logistics and organization problem. [0] - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1107324.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1107324.pdf [1] - https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38316/The-National-Internet-AR-KA-final.pdf https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38316/The-...
hexomancer 1y ago
I wrote a blog post which hopefully clears up the "National Network": https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-internet-2025.html https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-interne... It is way more than just DNS.

ZoomZoomZoom 1y ago

> WireGuard uses UDP and a small handshake footprint, making detection and blocking via DPI harder. Not quite true. Wireguard is already actively detected and suppressed if necessary. There's already a fork that employs basic changes to improve the protocol in this regard. AmneziaWG was shown to be more robust to detection for now. https://docs.amnezia.org/documentation/amnezia-wg/ https://docs.amnezia.org/documentation/amnezia-wg/ Too bad managing WG is such a pain and Tailscale/Netbird don't support this protocol yet. The following two issues need attention: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/10696 https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/10696 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1096 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1096

dongcarl 1y ago
At Obscura we just tunnel WireGuard over QUIC's unreliable datagram mechanism to make it look like HTTP/3 (for DPI): https://github.com/Sovereign-Engineering/obscuravpn-client/blob/fae9cda990ff2b4296feed5e45cf99abddd63716/rustlib/src/quicwg.rs https://github.com/Sovereign-Engineering/obscuravpn-client/b... We just upstreamed our patch to quinn-rs that pads Datagrams to MTU: https://github.com/quinn-rs/quinn/pull/2274 https://github.com/quinn-rs/quinn/pull/2274
- antonkochubey 1y ago
  Some DPIs just flat out block HTTP/3 already.
  - zinekeller 1y ago
    > Some DPIs just flat out block HTTP/3 already. Actually, some DPIs just straight-up reject UDP (and since DNS and NTP are UDP-based*, just straight-up interception-and-redirect). * TCP DNS exists but practically not used for most "normal" tasks, and at this point the censor is trying to block anything anyways.
znano 1y ago
True. but based on my researches don't use DPI on the NIN, so you might be able to use WG or OpenVpn on a VPS inside Iran but not to a VPS on let's say digital ocean. They can also selectively increase the or decrease the strength of their DPI as well, for example a range of IP can be graylisted and nothing will work on it, or they put more active probing effort on some ranges of IPs.

xkcd1963 1y ago

How do people do this in China?

mohas 1y ago
this is much more severe than in China. I've never been completely shut of Internet before. each time one of my servers had access to global Internet. this time no connection whatsoever. I hope people realise that encryption needs transmission, with no wire to transfer data encryption won't help you
mmh0000 1y ago
Shadowsocks is the common method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowsocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowsocks
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  This has been DPI'd to death in China and hasn't been useful in a while.
  - GardenLetter27 1y ago
    Trojan and X-ray still work though, albeit hosting is the issue there.
ethan_smith 1y ago
Chinese users typically rely on Shadowsocks (a SOCKS5 proxy designed to be undetectable), custom V2Ray configurations with obfuscation, or corporate VPNs that operate in legal gray areas, though the government continuously improves detection capabilities forcing constant adaptation of circumvention techniques.
- znano 1y ago
  Also obfs4 i believe is widely used there, either with tor or standalone(obfs4 over SSH). And dynamic port forwarding using SSH alone is widely used and fairly simple.

heraldgeezer 1y ago

[flagged]

pazimzadeh 1y ago
Just enable configure terminal router bgp <your-AS-number> neighbor <neighbor-IP-address> no shutdown end Democracy restored.

heraldgeezer 1y ago

>SMS in Iran is unencrypted. SMS everywhere is unencrypted

bawolff 1y ago
Yes, although many people probably don't know the difference between SMS and RCS and use SMS to refer to both.
- heraldgeezer 1y ago
  Even tech people? wowe
  - bawolff 1y ago
    You mean that group that still calls TLS SSL even though its been 26 years?
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      The important part is its use. You could call it magic key negotiation and I wouldn't care. RCS and SMS are fundamentally different technologies in every way.
      - bawolff 1y ago
        They are presented to the user in the same way. They serve the same function. From a user perspective, its about as different as http2 is from http1.1 or 3. (I.e. very different under the hood but not in a user visible way)
        heraldgeezer 1y ago
        Since when are we mere users? Job security for me I guess lol thanks
- znano 1y ago

bawolff 1y ago

> IPv4 addresses are limited and constantly reallocated. Most are rented and passed between hosting providers, resold between datacenters, or migrated across regions. The Iranian filtering system uses GeoIP databases and BGP information to decide which IP ranges to trust and which to block. But those records lag behind the changes. This is surprising to me. Surely iranian ISPs would have directly allocated IP space? Or alternatively, surely Iran's gov would be in the routers and be able to blackhole any routes leaving the country?

immibis 1y ago
Are they sanctioned away from RIPE, like Russia is? Russia isn't allowed to be allocated any IP addresses they don't already have. They're Russia, so they already have a bunch, but if they didn't, they'd have to keep borrowing them on grey markets, possibly different ones each time. Iran might be that way. (Fun fact about sanctions: the International Criminal Court is sanctioned away from Microsoft, so they can't legally get access to Windows or Office. This is because they prosecuted a war criminal the USA likes.)
- raron 1y ago
  > Fun fact about sanctions: the International Criminal Court is sanctioned away from Microsoft, so they can't legally get access to Windows or Office. How does that even work? There are many companies in the EU that (legally) sells second hand Windows and Office licenses to anyone.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
CaptainFever 1y ago
I'm ignorant about this, but I'm surprised there isn't just some physical switch that just straight up airgaps all network routes going out of the country.
- psnehanshu 1y ago

elternal_love 1y ago

If you are ever thinking of writing somethings like this: please be aware that people could be executed based upon the validity of your assumptions and advice offered.

ogurechny 1y ago
It certainly looks like it is compiled by a neural net or human that has no idea how people they talk about actually live. Places of actual discussion of censorship circumvention tools are full of much different talk on how to fool the external or internal DPI servers, on tunnelling through white-listed protocols, and so on. Also, those who can be executed like that have already realised that “safe” way of being a “good citizen” does not exist, it's a phantom for people who are — at the moment — rich, happy and walled from the rest (either physically or in their minds). They probably don't need to be told not to trust someone who is offering to solve all their problems.
beefnugs 1y ago
There is that iranian bot army we hear about: "dont write down knowledge or else someone somewhere will be executed!"
znano 1y ago
for what? nobody should follow anything blindly and im sure people in iran are more aware of this and they know how to take security precautions.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  > for what? ? A totalitarian regime doesn't need much motivation to have people killed, to the point where even having knowledge or reading the wrong thing will have you put on a list.
  - znano 1y ago
    I don't think the islamic regime is that advanced intl wise to track every single movement on the internet. maybe true for US if it turns totalitarian one day. But i do agree that they want to do so, not denying that at all.

hed 1y ago

The Starlink gateway out is a good solution, but I sure wouldn't share it with friends/family over the ISP networks if at all possible.

znano 1y ago
It is possible, i found this tool for it: https://github.com/nasnet-community/neighbor-link https://github.com/nasnet-community/neighbor-link

kwar13 1y ago

Excellent write-up. Sadly Starlinks are also illegal and the gov has been cracking down on them.

znano 1y ago
Thanks, yeah but illegal usually don't mean unobtainable

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pazimzadeh 1y ago

Aren't mesh networks the ideal case for this type of scenario?

znano 1y ago
Yes they should work in these scenarios but requires mass adoption to run a proper mesh network infrastructure.

hexmiles 1y ago

How easy is detecting a transmitting starlink terminal? I assume is pretty easy but i don't know if the phased array antenna and beamforming make detecting from ground harder. Could i detect it with a SDR while driving around, wardriving-style?

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znano 1y ago

Also hosting technical wikis would be super useful (because there won't be any other way to use ChatGPT or google stuff), and efficient (storage wise) if deployed with kiwix

oaiey 1y ago

This "National Information Network" seems like a blueprint all countries should apply. While I also do not want to have a censored internet and I am a fan of international collaboration, Cyber Warfare is unfortunately common nowadays and turning a blind eye on protecting the fundamental services it is quite stupid.

energy123 1y ago
The status quo of allowing multiple foreign intelligence agencies to run unlimited information warfare needs disruption. Read about the Internet Research Agency. More informational borders between nations will give us the appetite for lower physical borders between nations.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago
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CommenterPerson 1y ago

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nemomarx 1y ago
I would take some meddling from Europe around now, honestly.
ksajadi 1y ago
Because it might help us understand how the rest of the world works or how privileged a lot of us are in enjoying internet like we do or give us a better understanding of Iran the next time we see it on the news.
os2warpman 1y ago
>Why should we care how a country manages their internal affairs? The government of Iran supplies Russia with weapons used in their invasion of Ukraine, funds Houthi rebels who fire weapons indiscriminately at international shipping off the coast of Yemen, supplies terrorist groups in southern Lebanon, and advised the Syrian government during the Syrian Civil War which kicked off the greatest wave of human migration in recent history as people fled the brutality. By caring about their internal affairs there is a chance their external affairs may be influenced. Also, they execute rape victims, hang homosexuals in public, and kidnap and torture women who don't want to wear cloth on their head. Please, I'm begging you from the bottom of my heart, don't "buh whaddabow" me. It's pathetic.
- CommenterPerson 1y ago
  Re. Whataboutism. At times it is worthwhile looking in the mirror. In 2003 we bombed and occupied Iraq based on fabrications and propaganda by the Bush administration. According to the Lancet, there were 650,000 excess deaths attributed to violence 95% confidence. The middle east was thrown into turmoil and the effects are very much being felt by neighboring countries and Europe. Sooo .. if we are curious about how other countries run their affairs, maybe we should study high school education in Finland. They did a remarkable job of turning their system around to where their kids outperform American kids on the average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_cas...

jollyllama 1y ago

Sounds like the NIN is just domestic sourcing for the infrastructure that it applies to.