this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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Remote access in a country with heavy cencorship (lemdro.id)
submitted 6 months ago by mfat@lemdro.id to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Where I live wireguard and openvpn are completely blocked and my isp doesn't provide a public ip.

Tailsclale and cloudflare tunnels don't work either.

Is there a last resort method for accessing my home server (a mini pc running openwrt and docker).

Thanks!

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[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Tor's obfs4 protocol is pretty difficult to block, and it has some other transports that are options if obfs4 is unusable in a heavy censorship regime. This page is a good overview of how to start; with the right transport and bridge setup it'll be extremely difficult for your ISP to prevent you having access.

You could make your home server a securely-accessed onion site and connect to a remote-access-via-web service you're running there. That part might be a little challenging (and this process overall may be overkill) but it'd be very challenging for them to block it, I think, so if you've tried some things and had no luck, that might be the way to do it.

Be careful obviously

[–] mfat@lemdro.id 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Tor only works with Snowflake bridges and the speed is very low.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 15 points 6 months ago

Sounds like your government is fairly strict on what you can do. I would suggest Tor but that may be illegal. I would be careful not to do anything that could jeopardize your safety.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Can you ssh out? You could setup a VPS somewhere and use remote port forwarding to tunnel back home.

ssh -R 80:localhost:80 user@vps # forward HTTP traffic from remote host to the local host

You can even run ssh over an ssh tunnel for inceptiony goodness.

ssh -R 2222:localhost:22 user@vps  # your home system
ssh -p 2222 homeuser@vps  # From your remote system
[–] mfat@lemdro.id 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes I can SSH to my US vps. I'll give this a try thank you.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

SSH port forwarding is quite handy. You can have SSH setup a SOCKS proxy that you can use to send your browser traffic through the tunnel as well.

[–] yournamehere@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

have you heard of sshuttle?

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago

Interesting - I had not. It was ages ago I was doing something like what I posted (well before that project ever got started) and it worked "well enough" for what I was doing at the time. Usually I'd run a SOCKS proxy on that second SSH line (-D 4444) and just point my browser at localhost:4444 to route everything home (or use foxyproxy to only route some traffic home).

Looks like sshuttle may have better performance though and provide similar functionality.

[–] cloudless@lemmy.cafe 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Find a cheap hosting solution that provides a fixed IP address, then host your own VPN or proxy server there.

Edit: if you use a non-standard port for the VPN, it should be less likely to be blocked.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

To add on to this answer:

If they're blocking Wireguard/OpenVPN at the protocol level, there may not be anything you can do (running on a different port, etc).

If HTTPS works, between a cloud VPS and your home connection, you might be able to setup Nginx + VPN-WS on your cloud host to make a websocket-based VPN.

https://github.com/unbit/vpn-ws

I haven't tried this, but it looks solid enough. Just make sure you configure Nginx correctly for authentication since it doesn't do that on its own (intentionally since most web servers already have a solid authentication framework / plugin system).

You may also try SSH port forwarding. Basically your home device maintains a persistent connection to the cloud server over SSH and forwards one or more ports (its SSH, for example) over that, and the cloud server makes that available.

[–] mfat@lemdro.id 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

This is the case unfortunately. They are blocked at protocol level.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 months ago

Wireguard doesn't obfuscate its traffic so non-standard ports may not help depending on how sophisticated the blocking is (they could recognize the protocol and block your traffic regardless of port).

[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
HTTPS HTTP over SSL
IP Internet Protocol
SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
VPN Virtual Private Network
VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

[Thread #725 for this sub, first seen 29th Apr 2024, 17:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] filister@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried https://shadowsocks.org/? I don't have any experience with it, but heard it is good at masquerading your traffic and making it almost impossible for your ISP to block it

[–] mfat@lemdro.id 1 points 6 months ago

Shadowsocks is deprecated and doesn't work anymore.

[–] alvaro@social.graves.cl 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

@mfat@lemdro.id I would try an ssh tunnel... not the best solution (you need to configure it as a SOCKS proxy and specify ports, etc), but worth a try.

[–] mfat@lemdro.id 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It seems like this is the only solution. I'll give it a go.

[–] alvaro@social.graves.cl 1 points 6 months ago

@mfat@lemdro.id good luck and report back how it goes! :-)

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Try all the VPN technologies until you find one that may not be blocked.

Ipsec, ll2p, etc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_protocol

Heck... Ssh with port forwarding

Try configuring your VPN to use no encryption, that might allow it to get through

[–] mfat@lemdro.id 1 points 6 months ago

All protocols are blocked. Proxying through v2ray/xray still works.

[–] ClickyMcTicker@hachyderm.io -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

@mfat Depending on how they’re blocking VPNs (i.e. blocking specific ports, or allowing specific ports), you may be able to run one on a non-standard port. As an extreme example, you could run Wireguard on port 80 (HTTP), which is practically the last possible port that can ever be blocked on public internet.

[–] mfat@lemdro.id 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

No they are blocked at protocol level no matter which port you use.