- Nov 5, 2011
- 5,855
How Russians Are Outsmarting Internet Censorship : on advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org : http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2014/03/25/how-russians-are-outsmarting-internet-censorship/
Mere days after several opposition websites were blocked [Global Voices report] by Russia's mass communications regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, free speech proponents have created a unique system for circumventing censorship — and imposing counter-attacks. This approach could create problems both for censors and pro-Kremlin websites. Indeed, it seems that Russian Internet activists have taken the adage “the best defense is a good offence” to heart.
The system gained popularity when blogger Ruslan Leviev [ru] implemented the approach in order to access opposition leader Alexey Navalny's blog, which was blacklisted and blocked last year. A programmer identified as alexkbs, who first developed the system, explained in a blog post [ru] that he wanted to create a way for average users to access blocked material — a method for those who might not have the technological aptitude to use specialized services like Tor, i2p, VPN and proxy servers [ru]. This is why his approach is centered on allowing users to access blocked sites through plain old World Wide Web.
The method consists of a network of mirrors, or exact copies, of the blocked site, combined with an “active defense” mechanism. Because Roskomnadzor requires ISPs to constantly check if a resource is trying to circumvent a ban by changing its IP address, blocked resources can introduce code that redirects some of these IP queries to a different website. Eventually, goes the theory, ISPs will pick up on this redirect and block the secondary website as well. So if a blocked site is savvy enough to redirect to a government site, say Kremlin.ru, ISPs will ultimately block Kremlin.ru, a block that obviously can't stay in place for long.
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Mere days after several opposition websites were blocked [Global Voices report] by Russia's mass communications regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, free speech proponents have created a unique system for circumventing censorship — and imposing counter-attacks. This approach could create problems both for censors and pro-Kremlin websites. Indeed, it seems that Russian Internet activists have taken the adage “the best defense is a good offence” to heart.
The system gained popularity when blogger Ruslan Leviev [ru] implemented the approach in order to access opposition leader Alexey Navalny's blog, which was blacklisted and blocked last year. A programmer identified as alexkbs, who first developed the system, explained in a blog post [ru] that he wanted to create a way for average users to access blocked material — a method for those who might not have the technological aptitude to use specialized services like Tor, i2p, VPN and proxy servers [ru]. This is why his approach is centered on allowing users to access blocked sites through plain old World Wide Web.
The method consists of a network of mirrors, or exact copies, of the blocked site, combined with an “active defense” mechanism. Because Roskomnadzor requires ISPs to constantly check if a resource is trying to circumvent a ban by changing its IP address, blocked resources can introduce code that redirects some of these IP queries to a different website. Eventually, goes the theory, ISPs will pick up on this redirect and block the secondary website as well. So if a blocked site is savvy enough to redirect to a government site, say Kremlin.ru, ISPs will ultimately block Kremlin.ru, a block that obviously can't stay in place for long.
..
Read more at the website, please ..