Login service is blocked by China

[guoyunhe]

We are happy to answer your questions about the code or discuss technical ideas.

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Due to DNS pollution, Proton VPN's website cannot accessed normally in China anymore. I saw Proton VPN client use some DoH server but unluckily they are blocked, too. I am using a China based DoH provider: https://doh.pub/dns-query and it works for now. Can you try using it or some other DoH servers? Thanks!

[Anonymous941]

It would be nice if the DoH server were configurable like normal DNS servers are, but wouldn't a China DoH server also have the same censorship? afaik they are required to have the same censorship that ISPs have.

[guoyunhe]

It would be nice if the DoH server were configurable like normal DNS servers are, but wouldn't a China DoH server also have the same censorship? afaik they are required to have the same censorship that ISPs have.

Possibly, but for now they seems not affected yet.

Or maybe Proton VPN client can have a long list of DoH servers, just try one after one, until it connects...

[v-fox]

It's even worse in Russia:

• desktop app is just hanging with "Loading app" screen and timeout errors in log;
• mobile app also hangs at startup unless I force-launch it via byedpi, pseudo-VPN packet-mangler;
  • but byedpi was also defeated now, it can only allow few kilobytes to go through;
    • but this still helped mobile app to pass login screen;
      • can desktop app be forced to use proxy (like proxy_enabled=yes http_proxy="http://127.0.0.1:8080" socks_proxy="socks5://127.0.0.1:1080" options) or some internal obfuscation?
• I wasn't able to establish working free VPN testing connection directly via openVPN and WireGuard either: using example configs from site connections get technically established but no data was going through;
  • meaning that either something wrong in routing or they get intercepted by DPI and dropped, maybe both;
• of course, DNS is also DPI-filtered in Russia but I use dnscrypt.

I was able to establish one-time-use free openVPN connection for testing previously via other provider. In both cases I was targeting Netherlands but configuration seems quite different: Proton's is more complex but it doesn't create routes in ip r even if "not failed", unlike the other one.

I would say that "using some encrypted P2P methods for bootstrapping would be nice" but they've managed to nuke Tor completely, so I'm not sure if VPNs even viable in Russia anymore. Seems like that even this supposedly "obfuscated" WireGuard fork was nuked recently too.

[Anonymous941]

but they've managed to nuke Tor completely

No they haven't, not if you use bridges...

[I-I-IT]

Cloudflare has some midly-censored DNS if that can help. Like still censored but for a 5 year-old blocklist (feel like that).

Mullvad works better, but then there is the issue of payment.

[guoyunhe]

I have some new ideas:

1. Allow users to config their own DoH server (before login), at their own risk.
2. Allow users to disable DoH, so that they can edit /etc/hosts to by pass censorship...