Comment on Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told
jim3692@discuss.online 2 weeks agoYou can’t block VPNs without blocking the entire internet. You can block known VPN services, but you can’t prevent people from hosting their own.
Some known VPN protocols could be blocked, using introspection tools. However, this would just render corporate VPNs useless. VPN traffic is just bytes, and so is WebSockets. Good luck figuring out whether my HTTPS traffic is legitimate internet traffic, or masked VPN traffic.
piecat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Good news, we closed that pesky loophole by banning encryption without backdoors.
If they can’t decode it, you better be ready to explain exactly what those bytes were!
ragas@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Look at my cool new protocol that looks just like I am just loading a webpage about cat facts, which is actually a hidden VPN that I use to secretly look at webpages about cat facts.
Ugh@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
You’re my kind of people! ᓚᘏᗢ
jim3692@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
There is actually a technique called steganography, that does exactly that. It is used to hide arbitrary binary info inside images, while still fooling your eyes into thinking there is nothing sketchy there.
ragas@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I know! Nothing about all this is new.
The only new thing is that the UK government ist about to learn about those things.
piecat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Doesn’t jpg break this? And can’t it be detected? I imagine AI could be used to some extent.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Even if they go that route, and frankly I think they to get lynched, before we got to that point, they can’t monitor every single connection. That just way too much traffic.
That’s why China has a firewall, because that’s the best option they can come up with because monitoring every Chinese persons data is an impossible task. They’re only option would be to go North Korea route and just close the internet but that would basically end their economy.
piecat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Why do you think the telecoms got away with stalling upgrades and fiber roll outs for so long?
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
In China? I’ve read that sentence like six times I’m not quite sure what you’re alluding to, but China’s had fiber for about 10 years now. The reason they allowed it is because increasing everyone’s bandwidth doesn’t really make the job of monitoring them any harder. It’s still the same number of connections. Plus it allows businesses to be competitive on the global market.
Also they kind of assume their firewall would work. Initially it did work, at least for the majority of people, but over time that more and more have learnt to use a VPN and now the whole thing’s a bit of a pointless exercise. There is a massive disconnect in China between the younger generation who use VPNs and the older generation who just consume state media.