Russia blocks VPN: possible solutions

Aranycsapat · n00b Joined: 05 Apr 2020 Posts: 24

Russia tries to restrict vpn services and protocols. They banned free services first. Two weeks ago proton vpn users claimed they are unable to use the service. I am a cyberghost user and I experience some difficulties using vpn. The vary from light on my smartphone (powered by Android) to severe on my gentoo desktop, where normal internet surfing is not possible anymore since the connection is very unstable and slow (though a bit-torrent client works pretty fast). I use openvpn protocol on my desktop.What should I do to repair the connection? Using VPN is vital for me.

alamahant · Advocate Joined: 23 Mar 2019 Posts: 3879

You mean from Russia or to Russia?
You can try tor browser.
_________________

Aranycsapat · n00b Joined: 05 Apr 2020 Posts: 24

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2022 6:02 pm Post subject:

Aranycsapat,

Be careful how and if you answer.
The question may involve revealing your location.

alamahant assumes that you want a VPN connection across the Russian border and asks from the outside going in or from the inside coming out.
The assumption may be false, in that you just want a VPN to avoid traffic evesdropping.

What to do depends on how VPN is blocked and what you have control over.
e.g. If the ports are closed, you can try other ports. That requires that you have control of the remote end of the VPN.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

saturnalia0 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Oct 2016 Posts: 136

As far as I know your ISP cannot tell for sure that you're using a VPN. They may have a list of IP addresses from known VPN or VPS/cloud providers and assume that if you're connecting to those IPs (perhaps on certain ports) then you're using a VPN, though that's just a guess. You might want to try different configurations such as a different host and different ports...

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3136

One neat trick is to use http proxy with connect method.
The same way as it works with https over a non-transparrent proxy: you connect to the proxy, then invoke connect server:host, and then proxy initiates tcp connection and stops analyzing traffic. From now on, you have a TCP connection you can use for anything that runs over TCP protocol.

This tcp connection is typically used by a browser for ssl negotiation, but it can just as well be used for ssh session or general purpose vpn.
I can't recall what tools you need to use for that. I do know they are already available though.
TBH it shouldn't even really be that hard to write one yourself if you know some proxy you can use... I mean, the basic functionality would be like start netcat in client mode, send http headers, wait for response, and then start second netcat in server mode, double piped to the first one.
The response can be tested for status code, if you're feeling fancy, or discarded entirely. Like in: you're going to know if it failed. You may want to add an auto-reconnect feature though

And then make your vpn connect to your local netcat instead of the usual server, to have its traffic forwarded via proxy.

Aranycsapat · n00b Joined: 05 Apr 2020 Posts: 24

Thank you guys!

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21633

Correct, the direction of traffic was at issue. There are 4 possible configurations:

You are in Russia. You want to access a site in Russia.
You are outside Russia. You want to access a site in Russia.
You are in Russia. You want to access a site outside Russia.
You are outside Russia. You want to access a site outside Russia.

In case 1 and case 3, by being in Russia, you would be subject to Russian jurisdiction. If the site you want to reach is illegal for Russians to access, then revealing that you are in Russia and want to access it could be legally hazardous to you. In case 2, you are (probably) not subject to Russian jurisdiction, unless your home country has an extradition arrangement and could be convinced to exercise it on Russia's behalf. In case 4, you probably wouldn't have mentioned Russia in your first post, so we can assume that is not the case that applies to you. You don't necessarily need to tell us which of the cases applies to you. Before you answer, I suggest you determine whether the relevant jurisdictions banned VPN service to make privacy inconvenient or banned it because privacy is itself illegal.

Aranycsapat · n00b Joined: 05 Apr 2020 Posts: 24

Hu
My cases are #1 and #3. As far as I know reaching a banned site is not a crime in Russia at least at the moment as well as using VPN.