Egypt blocks the encrypted messaging app Signal as it continues cyber crackdown

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/26/1431709/

by sidcool • 10 years ago

129 53 10 years ago

pwnna• 10 years ago

The article seems to be scarce on details... I'm not sure if this is about the blocked access after signal deployed its "domain fronting"[1] mitigation technique (Dec 21) as the original reported cited by the article[2, 3] is from before the mitigation technique is deployed (Dec 17).

Are there more details about if domain fronting can be blocked as well?

[1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/doodles-stickers-censorship/

[2] https://twitter.com/ircpresident/status/810148053952892928

[3] https://twitter.com/NoraYounis/status/810268132187242497

altendo• 10 years ago

[1] answers it clearly:

With today's release, domain fronting is enabled for Signal users who have a phone number with a country code from Egypt or the UAE. When those users send a Signal message, it will look like a normal HTTPS request to www.google.com. To block Signal messages, these countries would also have to block all of google.com. (emphasis added)

It can be blocked, but doing so will block google.com. Basically Open Whisper Systems is making a block that much more costly to implement, since Google is ubiquitous in so many different areas.

EDIT: forgot how to add the emphasis, is fixed now.

kylehotchkiss• 10 years ago

Should have made it the website of the government :D

philfrasty• 10 years ago

Why isn't all HTTPS traffic being declared this way (hiding the real endpoint)? Is there any downside doing this?

eugeniub• 10 years ago

How did they manage to accomplish this? Did they need cooperation from Google to do this, and to what extent?

PakG12• 10 years ago

It can be blocked, but doing so will block google.com. Basically Open Whisper Systems is making a block that much more costly to implement, since Google is ubiquitous in so many different areas.

If they can ramp up their homegrown options or a regional competitor to Google develops that can really compete well, why wouldn't they block all of Google.com? In China, it's already happening. It's completely possible because a lot of the population doesn't require access to English content, and so doesn't require an English search engine. Local search engines like Baidu and foreign search engines willing to comply with their local laws like Bing will be totally fine. And given that the Middle East has a lot of locals who don't actually speak English, I see that as a distinct possibility in the future. The comparison is almost perfect, no?

pcmaffey• 10 years ago

Seems like even more effective than fronting as google.com would be essentially to front as a random domain, perhaps selected from the top 1k domains popular in that country...

To boot: Systematically defeating the ability for a country or ISP to block traffic to a specific domain would be a universal win for free speech.

hartem_• 10 years ago

Here is the paper that describes how domain fronting works in great detail http://www.icir.org/vern/papers/meek-PETS-2015.pdf

dimino• 10 years ago

I mistakenly thought Signal was an app on your phone that encrypted/decrypted text messages. What part of that has to be online, other than getting updated public keys, or is that the part that was blocked?

detaro• 10 years ago

Signal does not include the text message encryption feature anymore. It's an internet-based messenger.

avhon1• 10 years ago

Signal is really an XMPP client with a custom protocol extension. All of its encrypted messaging functionality relies on being able to communicate with the official Signal server(s).

The Android version can, or at least used to, send and receive text messages, but these were unencrypted. I believe that it was just to make Signal useful as an all-in-one short messaging app.

distances• 10 years ago

There was also an encrypted SMS/MMS feature, but that was removed in 2015: https://whispersystems.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-sms

moosingin3space• 10 years ago

Signal does not use XMPP, it uses its own Internet-based protocol.

h4waii• 10 years ago

The Android client does support regular SMS handling, which is what makes it great. Regular unencrypted SMS for users without Signal, and end-to-end for users who have it, all in the same application.

It used to support encryption over SMS, unfortunately it was removed and is now the primary focus of Silence[0], while Noise[1] is now for Signal without the requirement of GCM for signaling.

0. https://silence.im 1. https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide

myf01d3• 10 years ago

I'm from Egypt, I think it's more an economic than political initiative, telecom companies are among the last standing pillars of the economy and they are losing money more than ever as more and more people using chat software than talking using mobile phones or even using their shitty 3g internet connection which is still applied so far. Any connection on https is impossible to decrypt here anyway as our government isn't that competent.

SonicSoul• 10 years ago

so how does not being able to decrypt traffic make them lose money?

myf01d3• 10 years ago

Telecom companies which employed tens of thousands mostly young educated because of the massive growth since early 2000s, have been facing now slowdown if not shrinking because most people here are now communicating for free using whatsapp and viber. These companies were doing also nasty things like injecting advertisement codes inside plain html pages to earn money, as most people here are browsing only facebook and twitter which use https, it became harder for them to compensate their losses on their main service (phone calls). They were colluding with the government to ban some chat apps on 3g communication and postpone new technologies like 4g and faster adsl connections in order to make people obliged to return to phone calls. The government knows very well that these companies are too big to fail as they are maybe the biggest employer in the country.

jpollock2• 10 years ago

Legal intercept requirements cost money for the incumbents. Telcos have substantial legal intercept requirements in all markets.

If new entrants do not need to meet regulatory requirements, they can have substantially lower costs than the incumbents, allowing them to undercut them (for example, free text messaging).

This applies in all markets, such as Air BnB suppliers' avoidance of fire safety legislation that hotels have to meet (and zoning, traffic, etc).

Uber/Lyft's avoidance of taxi legislation, which is not necessarily about medallions. Some markets have licensing requirements which aren't applied to normal citizens (work hours and additional provision on license) [1].

Banking is a perfect example of this. You know those Visa cards that were offered by, say, Disney[2]? Offering a Visa card requires a banking license (which I understand is expensive and awkward), so they white-box an existing bank's cards (Chase does a lot of business here).

New entrants can be reasonably asked to meet the regulations. If they choose to not adhere to local legislation, it is perfectly reasonable to bar them from operating in a market.

There is a discussion on whether or not the requirement is sensible. That's for the locals to decide. With the passing of the UK's Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (Snooper's Charter), look for similar regulatory findings to start happening in the UK if there is significant pick-up of traffic on Signal.

[1] https://www.nzta.govt.nz/commercial-driving/taxis-shuttles-b...

[2] https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/visa-card/

walrus012• 10 years ago

Not so much that, but a threat to the revenue model of the licensed gsm carriers. Same reason Skype and VoIP is illegal in the UAE.

Cyph0n• 10 years ago

Stop fooling yourself. It's completely about censorship.

The focus of the Egyptian government since the coup has been suppression of dissent. The economy is a mess simply because too much time is being spent on making sure that no one criticizes the coup and the current regime.

Moreover, I would understand blocking a more popular chat app, but targeting Signal specifically means that the government is worried about activists. I'd wager that 99% of average phone users don't even know what Signal is.

stratigos• 10 years ago

signal ftw!

fgandiya• 10 years ago

Is it still blocked even after that change Signal made to the app a few days ago?

contravariant• 10 years ago

According to the comments below the article it seems it was blocked for a week but is currently working.

ge96• 10 years ago

Curious how you "block" an app. If you're saying blocking though an app store. But what about sending the files through other means, zip in an email, Dropbox, whatever. If the app connects online me somehow Egypt "knows"?

Asking because I don't know

makecheck• 10 years ago

We need to reach the point where there’s no easy way to simply “block” things you don’t like. Quite the opposite, it should be absurdly expensive to even try to do that, with numerous technical and geographic hurdles to overcome.

A truly secure protocol should have no easy way to identify its traffic (e.g. no obvious domain-name patterns that can be disallowed with a single regex, no common IP address blocks, and no suspicious volume of traffic that couldn’t just as easily come from 100 other things on the Internet). The backbone itself should also have more than one off-switch; difficult in practice for some remote areas but theoretically doable in combination with satellite radios, etc.

Egypt blocks the encrypted messaging app Signal as it continues cyber crackdown

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