It was not working 2 day on mobile operators, now waiting full shutdown
Blocking all encrypted traffic… fantastic suggestion comrade, I’ll forward this on to the Kremlin. Also, you’ve been drafted.
I suppose with “comrade” you are hinting at Soviet customs, but Russia isn’t the USSR and couldn’t be further from being socialist
Russia isn’t the USSR but it is heading towards the USSR ways, and it’s already there in many aspects. It’s not just on a technical definition, a lot of pro-war and nationalist rhetoric is rooted in the old USSR culture.
The USSR wasn’t socialist, it was communist. And yes I know, it wasn’t real communism because real communism is a utopia.
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/187649/is-it-possible-to-detect-vpn-in-the-network
tl;dr: You can infer that OpenVPN is used from the key exchange somehow.
It’s a custom protocol that uses SSL/TLS for key exchange and such, so it can be detected. It’s actually causing huge problems for many large Russian companies, as it’s common to use those protocols for remote access, work, etc.
As mentioned in the article you need something like “Shadowsocks” to avoid protocl blocking, since it fully disguises the traffic as standard SSL/TLS. Which was created for, and is still used to circumvent this type of blocking in “the great firewall of china”.
Unless the whole of the inner IP packet is encrypted,
It is, because they’re inside an encrypted stream of data.
The way OpenVPN works is this:
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OpenVPN establishes a TLS connection to the OpenVPN server.
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Your computer’s kernel generates an IP packet.
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OpenVPN sucks that up, shoves it into the TLS connection. That connection is encrypted, so the network provider cannot see inside it, know whether the data is IP packets or anything else, though I suppose maybe traffic analysis might let one classify a connection as probably being a VPN.
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The data in that connection is broken up into IP packets, went to the OpenVPN server.
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The OpenVPN server decrypts the data in the TLS stream, pulls the original IP packets out.
So the original packets are always encrypted when the network sees them. Only the OpenVPN server can see the unencrypted packet you originally sent.
What @raltoid is saying sounds plausible, though I can’t confirm it myself off-the-cuff – that OpenVPN is detected by looking at somehing unique in the initial handshake.
VPN detection is simple: track new encrypted connections outside of Russia, connect to the same server, check if it replies as a VPN server. If it does, block the shit out of it. No need for packet inspection or any voodoo.
Is OpenVPN not just SSL traffic?
It’s not, it’s an IPSec VPN by default which runs over UDP. You can run it via TCP and it operates over the same port as HTTPS (443), but it’s not the same protocol and can be differentiated that way.
A way around this would be to run an SSLVPN with a landing page where you log in instead of using an IPSec VPN or a dedicated SSLVPN client.
Another way around it would be to create a reverse SSH tunnel on a VM/VPC in another country/state and send all your traffic through that.
Is OpenVPN not just SSL traffic?
It’s not, it’s an IPSec VPN by default which runs over UDP. You can run it via TCP and it operates over the same port as HTTPS (443), but it’s not the same protocol and can be differentiated that way.
I think that either I’m misunderstanding what you’re aiming to say, or that this is incorrect.
OpenVPN can run over UDP or TCP, but it’s not IPSec, not even when running over UDP. IPSec is an entirely separate protocol.
Is this just address/port blocking, or DPI of some kind? I’m wondering what they can trigger off?
Interesting read: https://www.ntkernel.com/how-to-bypass-egypts-wireguard-ban/
Can this actually work? If you run Wireguard on a non-default port, is it possible to tell that it’s wireguard?
Yes ofc they can. The Wireguard protocol is not designed to be hidden.
Interesting read: https://www.ntkernel.com/how-to-bypass-egypts-wireguard-ban/
Most open source vpn protocols, afaik, do not obfuscate what they are, because they’re not designed to work in the presence of a hostile operator. They only encrypt the user data. That is, they will carry information in their header that they are such and such vpn protocol, but the data payload will be encrypted.
You can open up wireshark and see for yourself. Wireshark can very easily recognize and even filter wireguard packets regardless of port number. I’ve used it to debug my firewall setups.
In the past when I needed a VPN in such a situation, I had to resort to a paid option where the VPN provider had their own protocol which did try to obfuscate the nature of the protocol.
