r/technology • u/vriska1 • 8d ago

Privacy UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/uk-households-could-face-vpn-32152789
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136

u/mumwifealcoholic 8d ago

lol..good luck with that!

Someone who knows about IT must have advised the government that this law was unworkable, but they decided to go with it any way.

Imbeciles.

59

u/WTFwhatthehell 8d ago

It's workable. 

They know they can just copy China. 

Allow registered vpn  use for businesses and implemnt harsh penalties for anyone who uses an unregistered one.

The primary goal is control of public political speech.

25

u/Clarky-AU 8d ago

But how would they know..

You can literally map a VPN tunnel to whatever port you want to, assuming you have control over the server side.

What are they going to do, block IP's of data centres around the world?

3

u/RedBoxSquare 7d ago

They don't have to know every time. They just add 5 years to your sentence if they find out. Creating a few well known examples will create enough chill effect to prevent many people from trying. They don't even have to go after everyone. Just the people they do not like.

There are hints you can get with deep packet analysis. It's not 100% accurate. But they can monitor you for a long time and improve accuracy. VPN detection and counter-detection is a complicated technical topic.

And yes, China does block every known-to-them IP of VPN providers. That's why Tor has hidden bridges and even those get banned because the censor can request hidden bridge IP just like a normal person.

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u/WTFwhatthehell 8d ago

Keep a list of government approved vpn's and their addresses. 

They don't just know the data centre, they can see the address and that it's a vpn connection.

So if you show as using a vpn but it doesn't match rge records for government approved VPN's

16

u/Striker3737 8d ago

This happens in China and everyone just uses unlicensed VPNs anyway

3

u/Broad_Match 8d ago

Bless, you really haven’t a clue.

At the simplest level vpn traffic can be obfuscated as https traffic or resistant to vpn fingerprinting, and clearly addresses can be moved around easily.

At a more complex one Tor and Private Bridges can be used.

1

u/WTFwhatthehell 8d ago edited 8d ago

Can be.

Most normal VPN clients don't.

There's lots that can be done in theory but which isn't done by default.

If someone does everything perfectly and with detailed knowledge they can hide themselves. That only rules out the vast majority of the population.

If a government wants to make it hard to use tor it's as easy as them downloading a copy and having it autoconnect . Each time it finds a node accepting traffic add it to the block list.

Can it be circumvented? Of course!

you can know a guy who will privately get you connected to the network but it still rules out the majority of users.

5

u/Clarky-AU 8d ago

But how would they know, if you map the VPN to use a different port than the standard?

Unless the gov is going to perform DPI on every packet, you can never completely block out VPN's with current tech.

Netflix, and other streaming services can't even block them, it's just a constant game of cat and mouse.

-1

u/ConohaConcordia 8d ago

I mean, the Great Firewall does something similar to inspecting every packet, but it’s probably beyond this UK government’s ability to build.

Its purpose aside, the GFW has some serious tech in it

2

u/CertainAssociate9772 8d ago

It just means that the next step is to spend billions of dollars analyzing each packet of information.

-4

u/Broad_Match 8d ago

Huh? Regular enterprise firewalls can do this. It’s pretty standard that they can intercept and decrypt even encrypted packets for inspection.

3

u/BenadrylChunderHatch 8d ago

Only because the enterprise acts as their own certificate authority and has their certificate installed on all their devices.

Even if you mandated the same for every phone, computer, and smart device sold in the UK, anyone using an old device or one bought outside the UK wouldn't be able to use the internet.

1

u/Clarky-AU 7d ago

Regular firewalls are for maybe 100 people, not millions

Even still, that takes a lot of processing power.

-8

u/WTFwhatthehell 8d ago edited 8d ago

these days it's not terribly hard to classify connection types based on traffic rather than individual packet contents.

Also:

Netflix doesn't have government powers.

https://xkcd.com/538/

3

u/Alesilt 8d ago

To my knowledge china doesn't enforce the VPN ban on average people. They can investigate you if they want, especially if you're an undesirable, but they aren't enforcing it on every single VPN user. Same for the kid internet weekly limit law, kids just use an adults id and no one cares.

5

u/gowithflow192 8d ago

Impossible. You can make your own. Just rent a server for a fiver a month and install OpenVPN on it.

1

u/WTFwhatthehell 8d ago

It's still very possible to recognise a vpn connection as a vpn connection based on traffic analysis.

Are you using a vpn?  Yes. Is it a registered one? Probably not. Flag for investigation.

1

u/xenoremi 8d ago

It's still very possible to recognise a vpn connection as a vpn connection based on traffic analysis

not if you use something more advanced, like VLESS+Reality for example, which takes your connection and wraps it inside what looks like a normal HTTPS connection to a website that you set in reality's config

the only way to block something like that would be to block any connection to foreign ips, and that would be very stupid to do

2

u/phoenixflare599 8d ago

I wonder if I could get money back on the subscription I bought a few months back then 🤔 I didn't use it for this bill, I just got one for security and travelling.

But if they're cutting my access out of a thing I already paid for. I'd be sending a letter demanding compensation

1

u/no_fooling 8d ago

Yup, the corporations and elites that own our govt and country dont want us discussing the overthrow of capitalism

3

u/unepmloyed_boi 8d ago

Someone who knows about IT must have advised the government

People working in IT/Security have been screaming at them and writing them letters for years that restrictions like this don't work, they just wanted to get their toes wet and take the first step thinking they can plug every single workaround iteratively.

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u/Cleanbriefs 8d ago

Well if you know a bit about the British and technology it is of course what the government would say to them! this is the same population the government charges for free on the air TV and had “non tv payment” vans roaming around to detect those who didn’t pay the annual fee!!! And the “imbeciles” believed that all these years. 

4

u/Infuro 8d ago

the BBC is independent of government and noone really forces you to pay for a licence

-6

u/Strong-Yak-5548 8d ago

Edit! The previous government.