Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use | Hacker News Reader

Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use

turkeyblocks.org

226 pointsgokhan97 comments

Events like this is the reason I operate a few Tor Bridges. It gives uncensored internet to vulnerable people in countries that are (semi-)dictatorships.

The Streisand VPN includes a Tor Bridge by default, so if you ever have problems with an advanced firewall that blocks most VPN protocols, Streisand with Tor is your friend.

Tor Bridges are also a nice playground for modern cryptography, they are working on PQ Crypto: https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/isis/torspec.git/plain/pr...

I think uncensored internet is under attack in general even in the america and europe. No one with power seems to like the idea of stuff they cant control.

> I think uncensored internet is under attack in general even in the america and europe

...where the actors are more subtle and use mass surveillance to manipulate people and undermine "dissidents".

The UK is also putting quite a filtering infrastructure in place. To fight terrorism, extremists, porn, filesharing etc.

I read about this too, it sounds like a firewall to me.

Source: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-must-be-given-po...

?so, does the bridge work the same as an exit?

Anyone else remember the time the TurkTrust cert was used to mitm Google? https://www.google.se/amp/s/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01...

Does Turkey still have a key the gov can use to mitm connections terminating there?

And if so, can someone make instructions in Turkish on how to blacklist the Turkish TLS certs in mainstream browsers so that the gov can't mitm their own citizens?

For that matter, I don't want a Turkish root of trust in my own browser either, but the list of roots in our browsers is so long it's kinda meaningless to start zapping them - I mean, who trusts Verisign anyway?

I've heard about problems with trusting certain certificates. Any suggestion where I can read about these specific matters that you mentioned? Thanks.

Mozilla has a Google discussion forum for stuff like that. Just Google stardom and Mozilla discussion:)

Decentralization is key to bypass these type of firewalls. All commercial VPN vendors will be on blacklists sooner or later.

Hang around lowendtalk / lowendbox and rent a tiny dir cheap VPS. Just SSH there and use the SOCKS5 proxy built into SSH. I hope they will not block SSH any time soon.

If they do you can set up a HTTPS website on your VPS with a secret proxy.

Shows the importance of using simple tools.

Similarly, I've recently discovered how to send encrypted email from your command line, really really easy (note that Gmail throws these away if they come from an invalid domain name).

`echo "This is a secret message" | gpg -e -a -r "recipients@gpg.key" | mail -s "Your eyecatching subject line" recipients-email@example.com`

For encryption using S/MIME with mailx (from heirloom-mailx), see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12742809

>I hope they will not block SSH any time soon

GFW already does that. it's not that hard either, if you're using ssh for forwarding purposes, chances are you're using way more bandwidth than if you're using it for teletype only.

> GFW already [blocks ssh]

Where can I read more about that?

SSH can also be used for SCP...

And SFTP

How? I bet most commercial VPN services rotates on billions of different IPv6 addresses (from completely different subnets that is).

IPv6 allocations are generally /64s, or /56s, and are typically blocked as a full range.

Individually blocking IPv6 addresses, as /128s, would indeed be futile.

Could happen in any country, including the US, unless you have options to connect to the internet which is not heavily controlled. Sadly in the US we have only a few remaining ISPs with monopolies who in the near future will likely gain even more power to restrict the internet for profit; after that what is to stop the government from adding a few more "additions", like making illegal connections to TOR or unapproved VPNs. Sadly the most vulnerable part of the internet is the point where you connect. No matter what you do after that, if you can't connect you are generally stuck.

I don't think the number of ISPs is really relevant. The rule of law is pretty strong in the United States. If the government made Tor illegal, and that law withstood constitutional scrutiny, it wouldn't really matter if there was one or one thousand ISPs.

Yeah. I think that crypto-ideologues (although I'm not saying that the parent is one) often underestimate the impact that the law has in practice on these matters.

You underestimate the selective use of law by the elites. How many bankers are behind bars? Do you see anybody punished for starting a war under false pretenses? for mass surveillance? for lying to Congress about it?

I think the claim was along the lines that if you want to restrict people's freedoms in this country, it's best to get a law passed allowing you to do so. That's oversimplified, of course, as is common in such online discussions, but it makes considerable practical sense.

Your claim seems focused on other categories of wrongdoing.

Now, the two areas could overlap in the future. To date, there's been a lot of illegal surveillance that has gone unpunished, but few people have actually suffered, at least in the US, because the government has been quite restrained about its actual domestic use of the resulting information.

In the future, of course, the government might not show such restraint.

By "future" I mean, for example, the period starting next January 20.

I wonder if they can do the same thing they're doing in Iran? Beaming down packets of internet content from satellite TV.

http://wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-satell...

Probably not. That's funded by a foreign government (almost certainly the US government) as a kind of propaganda tool against Iran. I don't think anyone's interested in doing the same thing to Turkey currently.

I doubt it. Did you read the article? They badly _need_ funding and are having a tough time keeping it afloat. I see no evidence to suggest foreign interests at play.

Yes, I read the Wired article. It mentions the government funding. I'm guessing the US because it's very much the kind of project they fund.

If you want to donate to Tor bridges/nodes, these are two alternatives:

- http://tor.noisebridge.net/

- https://www.torservers.net/

This is the same President that turned to the internet - via Twitter and Facetime when there was a coup attempt against him, asking for them to help.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/erdogan-embraces-social-media-to...

(Cannot read the paywalled article.)

I wonder how FaceTime was utilized, given that it's one-to-one link, not social media.

It was super low tech...a CNN Turk anchor held her phone up to a TV camera. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/07/17/01/3658391B0000057...

I wonder how many ℅ people using tor/vpn will still using it if it was strongly punished by government(s) with jail for exemple..

Remember a short time ago when there was a failed coup in turkey, and the NEXT DAY, the regime fired 4000 judicial officials and civil servants? It's almost as if they had the list of people ready to go before the false flag coup... Nah,an autocratic regime would never do that!

The arrest and torture of an exorbitant number of 'enemies of the state', including judges, police officers, and teachers, indicates more important problems in Turkey.

For some reason, a lot of Turks still seem to support Erdogan. The West doesn't really care what he does, as long as Turkey takes care of most of the refugees.

A disgusting European policy.

Please resist the temptation to scoot right back up to generic politics in a thread like this. We've had that discussion before on Hacker News, let's try to have a new one.

Even though there is some technical information in it, the message of the article is purely political and I don't see how one can discuss this article without going into politics.

I have to agree. This entire article is about the action of the Erogan government when they decided to block Tor, so it's a bit rich for someone to scold you over making an on-point, if perhaps controversial, comment.

How's that week of no politics working out for HN?

>For some reason, a lot of Turks still seem to support Erdogan

You hear 3 reasons, typically...

- Viewed as a champion for lower class citizens, who weren't well represented in past administrations

- Supportive of religious conservatives, also not represented well in the past

- The economy has improved under his tenure. Inflation slowed, infrastructure improved, etc.

Not disputing your view of him, but he is popular for palpable reasons.

Internal economy seems like it has improved by the numbers, but the greatest problem is the longevity of these improvements. If Turkey is not able to keep its economy together, whereas it will likely not be able to due to the aforementioned improvements being a result of the construction industry supplying for no demand, it is going to crash very badly.

Additionally, with its foreign policies and own political and socioeconomic problems, foreign investment has gone down significantly, leading to a great exchange rate declines (1.2 USD/TRY prior to the 2008 crisis, to 3.5 USD/TRY close today).

I still remember the people kicking tanks away the night of the failed coup. That dude has fans.

> A disgusting European policy.

I suggest you understand it before you criticize it. It is called Westphalian Sovereignity[0] and Europeans have very solid and good reasons for it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty

I meant the EU (initially) wanting to accept them on the sole premise of 'taking care' of refugees. Anybody in it's right mind wouldn't want to have anything to do with Turkey in it's current state.

Because there is now a sufficient majority of Turks who want to destroy the secular Turkey, apply gradually more and more islamic country and get rid of Turkey's within enemies: Secular people and Kurds. Erdogan is just listening to the people like he says, he only additionally wants to destroy and humiliate his personal and political enemies because he is a psycho. Furthermore, he adores money, his family built an multi-billion empire during his reign.

That's a good question: if there's a majority of Turks who support the regime, what's the problem? Can't we like, leave them in peace? Do we have to impose western politics everywhere in the world??

Real crux comes how the EU is bending over backwards to borg them and yet the majority of Europeans do not care for the state of Turkey and its actions, let alone absorbing them into the EU.

This and people confuse western politics with humanity and moral standards and that is an area in which Turkey is nose-diving at an alarming rate. Very concerning indeed :(.

The real question should be: Why does the US want to apply "democracy" and "human rights" using all means including interventions and civil wars like in Iraq, Syria and Libya but it acts as if there nothing happens for more criminal regimes like in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar?

Indeed and does highlight a level of corruption in which money allows you to get away with murder, most literally in some Middle Eastern countries you mention. This and the EU's pokemon attitude to the European tectonic pklate of got too collect them all, seems to allow some serious issues to get dismissed and overlooked in Turkey alone.

As for Qatar and Saudi Arabia, again, if they were not rich countries would they be allowed as much slack as they do.

Still, maybe people had enough of this level of corruption and double-standards being allowed; Which may in part explain how people vote in today's times.

Actually most of the Turkish people think that US has tried to coup in Turkey with the help of CIA and very religious and anti-secular (who hates Ataturk) Gulen group. That group is so dangerous that they even faked themselves as secular on coup text which was read on tv forcedly.

That religious group has been ruling the country with their own politicians, lawyers, soldiers for the last 40 years however they want. Erdogan helped them gain power against real secular people and even jailed secular soldiers and journalists with this partnership. Many good people died in jail because of getting cancer.

Currently he is in a war against his old friend Gulen and clearing Turkey up from them. Both secular people and his fans support this action as that group ruined the country.

However Erdogan is upset at EU and US because they left him alone with his war so that's why he tries to provocate EU. Don't give a meaning to his sayings/actions.

Btw Kurds and PKK (terrorists) are very different. Don't get fooled by western media.

With Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the answer is obvious: because those countries invest boatloads of money in the American economy, and losing that money would be bad.

Turkey is a NATO ally and has a very powerful and experienced military as well as a strong sense of national identity. The USA could not openly intervene like it did with Iraq, Syria and Libya.

>>if there's a majority of Turks who support the regime, what's the problem?

There are at least two problems.

First, the "will of the people" argument works only if there is a strong culture of democracy, respect for the rule of law and proper representation of minorities. None of those things exist in Turkey (I'm Turkish). Typically, what happens when Erdogan wins elections is that he views it as a "mandate" and starts oppressing the shit out of his opposition by jailing or exiling people who disagree with him. He has gone so far as to use his party to change laws in his favor. And all those infrastructure improvements he has made? They have all enriched himself and his buddies (called "crony capitalism").

Second, Turkey is an extremely important player in the Middle East. If we want the region to stop spiraling out of control, there needs to be a modern, stable and secular democracy with a Muslim population there that can be used as a model by other countries. Otherwise the region will always be in turmoil, which will inevitably spill over to Europe and the rest of the world (in the form of refugees, extremist terrorists, etc.).

If you don't vote for Erdogan, you have a serious problem. I don't like Hitler comparisons, and I don't want to say that Erdogan is comparable to Hitler, but it's a bit like saying 'If Hitler was elected democratically, what's the problem?'.

>For some reason, a lot of Turks still seem to support Erdogan. The West doesn't really care what he does, as long as Turkey takes care of most of the refugees. A disgusting European policy.

That's probably for the best. In the areas that there were leaders that West did care about (or pretended to, for control and resources) and actively intervened, they created hell holes of civil war, chaos and fundamentalism.

What do you think Europe should do?

Cancel (instead of 'freezing') the negotiations about Turkey entering the EU, cancel the refugee agreement , and set repercussions for the torture, control of media, use of intimidation for votes for Erdogan, the blackmail of the EU (and countless other things, but you get the picture).

Erdogan has reignited PKK terrorism.

Sorry for the digression, in democracy, if 49% of the voters are non violent enemies is it a problem ?

I wonder how much this has to do with tor rebranding from privacy service to human rights service.

https://medium.com/@virgilgr/tors-branding-pivot-is-going-to...

Nothing unexpected for the 2016 Turkey. With everything that goes on in there now, it won't be too long until something really horrible happens.

Boycott everything turkish is the only thing we can do as normal persons I guess. That is at least what I've done for a long while now.

> Boycott everything turkish is the only thing we can do

That doesn't seem to work very well. It certainly didn't with with Israel, simply pushing the country more and more into a paranoid mindset of continuous siege which is effectively exploited only by hardliners like Netanyahu. Similarly, economic sanctions didn't work against the original Fascism either. Arguably they didn't work against Iran either, they barely gave "the west" a bargaining chip when the nuclear issue could not be ignored anymore. And they are not working against Russia about Ukraine.

Please don't. Poorer they are, more fanatic they get.

The poorer they get, more reason to get rid of the leaders. And that is something only the people can do.

Anyway, I can't justify it with what I know and what we hear almost daily now.

If only internet could be smuggled on the cellphones of citizens, one huge encrypted package at a time, hidden away, and the infrastructure of this spread like a virus- TOR could be everywhere.

In my experience, these countries do not have the sophistication to do such things on their own, they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do this.

I think it would be helpful if the press would 'name names' in terms of the companies that are enabling this.

> they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do this.

Yep, such as Cisco which helps China, to quote Cisco's pitch slides, "combat ‘Falun Gong’ evil religion and other hostiles" (https://www.wired.com/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do ; https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/files/cisco_p... (PDF)).

China definitely has the capabilities they need. They might get help from Cisco, but they don't need to.

I worked in an F50 that sold services, and we were constantly having to 'help' countries like Tunisia, Kazakstan etc. do some things we didn't want them to do, we tried to steer clear of being involved but we could not in some circumstances. But it wasn't that bad, it was mostly porn filtering and such.

Which company was this?

"Which company was this?"

There's no way I would name the company, it would be a breach of confidentiality. If there was something tantamount to whistle-blowing, possibly, but there was nothing illegal going on.

"What is F50?"

'Fortune 50'

What's an F50?

I guess it means Fortune 50.

Fortune 50 company

Forbes 50 I think?

This article suggests that Turkey is doing this kind of work themselves: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023046263045795059...

Although, it does mention some help from Google with YouTube...

"In late 2012, Google launched a local version of YouTube, a move that allowed the company to block access to some videos within Turkey while making them available elsewhere. "

Edit: Ahh, did find one US company with deep packet inspection tech assisting Turkey...Procera. http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/10/25/procer...

That's a very Western attitude. Turkey is an advanced country with amongst others, a sophisticated aerospace industry. There is no reason they can't have local expertise in networking, which lets face it is simple in comparison.

"That's a very Western attitude"

Yeah. Sure. Turkey can make airplanes. Great.

They still need help with a lot of things. Can you name any Turkish companies that build packet sniffing hardware? That design special ASICS for this? Content filtering solutions? Specialized networking gear? Maybe, but probably not.

The vast majority of countries that have 'controlled internet' scenarios cannot do it themselves, or rather, it would be very difficult to do.

In fact - which countries could do it alone ...

Russia, China, surely. India. Turkey ... probably not.

Saudi, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Indo, basically every country in M/E and Africa, pretty much all of South America (maybe Brazil?), probably not Pakistan, not North Korea.

Forget 'Western' - there are just a few countries that could do it alone, depending on the degree of sophistication of control. Basically West/North Europe, USA/Can, Japan, S. Korea, Russia, China, India ... Singapore even is probably too small. It's not a long list.

I have actually developed deep packet inspecting firewalls in Turkey. There are both domestic and exported solutions.

ISPs are required by law to use one.

Turkey has the technology. I have worked on one.

Turkish science council gives large grants for national security related technologies. So even it is not profitable, technologies like DPI are developed by several private firms.

That's very interesting. Turkey is a really intriguing place - they are on the threshold of so many thing, culturally, politically, economically. On some days they seem like a regular, modern nation ... the next day there is a 'coup attempt' and the Prez. is announcing mass jailings :)

Tor was funded by the US State Department specifically so that anti-government elements in foreign countries could plot against their equivalent of "the establishment". Given the recent furore about "hackers" stealing the election, how is it surprising that foreign governments don't want US interference in their internal politics?

Is this a political post or a technical one?

I think it is fair to say it is technical enough to be here

It surely is, but since this site lately has taken a stance against politics here, I wanted to understand where the line is drawn.

The one week experiment ended early. Politics has been allowed again for longer than the experiment ended - I think we are supposed to remain civil though.

That stance was withdrawn a few days after it was instantiated.

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