The End of the Cambodian Internet?

[root]

Will they do the evading? Anyone know?

Most of them should be sufficient but it will flag your traffic as "suspicious" . So with all foreigners required to have their home-address registered they could trace you. Use free wifi from a restaurant/hotel/whatever, do not bring your smartphone and do not use any regular accounts if you gonna post/search stuff that could bring you in trouble. I don't see the Cambodian government purchasing 0-days (at this point in time) but you can make nice money finding an 0-day in these types of applications and you are fucked if they target you with that...

I am more worried this thing turns into a bottleneck affecting streaming services/gaming or some IT monkey fucks up the system resulting in a nation wide internet blackout. We could always help them, the system will parse traffic, no parser is perfect, oops exploit

[Bong Burgundy]

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen signed a sub-decree on February 17 to create the country’s long-planned National Internet Gateway (NIG), a new Chinese-style firewall that critics fear will give authorities even more draconian powers to shut down online free-speech.

According to a draft of the sub-decree leaked last year to the media, authorities want to create a gateway in order to boost “national revenue collection”, “protect national security” and assure “social order,” all ill-defined terms that are currently used in other legislation to imprison government critics.

Article 6 of the leaked copy stated that the NIG operator would work with the government “to take actions in blocking and disconnecting all network connections that affect safety, national revenue, social order, dignity, culture, traditions and customs.”

Under the scheme, all internet traffic, including from overseas, will be routed through a single portal managed by a government-appointed regulator. Internet service providers (ISPs) who historically have been left to manage Internet traffic flows will have 12 months to re-route their networks through the single gateway.

The NIG operator will also be required to store all Internet traffic metadata for 12 months, which can be assessed by the authorities. Government spokesman Phay Siphan denied in an AFP wire report that the NIG system is intended to crack down on free speech, although he added that the authorities “will destroy those [internet] users who want to create rebellion.”


Cambodia already has several regulations to strictly control online content. The 2015 telecommunications law allows authorities significant powers to request user traffic data from ISPs.

The country’s criminal codes as well as “fake news” legislation has been used frequently to imprison activists or ordinary users who are critical of the country’s authoritarian government.
More: https://asiatimes.com/2021/02/cambodia- ... -firewall/

[Wtf]

So any website that is undermining the countries standards will be disappeared in kow.

Anti china websites, anti kow websites, los websites, crypto exchange websites, kow porn and mail order bride websites and unlicensed websites, disappeared at will.

[RobW]

The end of porn??

[The Steve]

Can someone more techy explain?

If using mobile date, the ip address changes or is shared between several users on the network correct? Will it be possible to tell exactly which user was using which ip to look at x site at a certain time (if all data must be kept for 2 years)?

Would using VPN or TOR be possible, guess it must if they work in China?

[Ynot]

In thailand around 10 years ago, when red shirts were rebelling, it was common for yahoo to be blocked at internet cafes in isaan.

[Alexandra]

Can someone more techy explain?

In my understanding based on the limiting information available this will be done at peering level of the ISP. IP assignment will still be handled the same and the user will not notice anything, besides a possible (large) performance penalty. This will be handled in the backbone and ISPs won't be allowed to have international uplinks any more and will peer directly with the NIG which in turn provides the international uplink.

I am not sure how this will affect providers who physically own their own international uplinks, like Telcotech and NTT. I am guessing that the NIG is a metaphor in this instance. Unless they cut the cable and shove it in a government facility, it will mean giving the government direct access, which they already have, because those ISPs follow government orders or lose their licensing. How many years did they spend on those submarine cables? They won't be cut, but they will be monitored.

Now speaking about monitoring. You have to understand the extreme amounts of data involved. In order to monitor the data you need to pass it to a CPU. Cisco core routers purposefully don't pass network traffic to the CPU because high traffic overloads the processor. When network traffic is analyzed, selected parts of it are passed to the CPU temporarily.

Would using VPN or TOR be possible, guess it must if they work in China?

It will work and it will not work. The simple answer is that it will be constantly changing, because it's a cat and mouse game. We simply don't know until it's implemented.

Don't assume that China will share their blacklist with Cambodia. The priorities are different and Cambodia will have its hands full blocking in accordance to their own priorities. It would be devastating for China if their official blacklists leaked. They will never share that with Cambodia.

Realistically put Cambodia will have the means to block Tor, and VPN will mostly be a children's game. There are several bypass techniques but it would be foolish to post them in public before the NIG has been put in place. We will simply have to find ways to adapt to the situation when it's reality.

While Cambodia has the means to block Tor, Tor also has the means to circumvent blocks. VPN providers are sitting ducks and most of them are not interested in helping you bypass national level censorship. They want the easy low maintenance customers who do some filesharing or want to bypass geolocation restrictions to watch some Netflix documentary.

[Toe to toe withem]

Do you think tor orbot vpn will duck their shite.

Ive used it before and upon doing ipleak checks, its the only vpn ive had out of many that never showed a dns leak.

Its free too.

[v12]

In general, such a National Internet Guard is not a "one box in one location". It's just that the government insists on having their boxes in the connections with abroad. For each of the connections. And the government "monitors" what is going on through that box. So, not a central point, anyway, there are no boxes in existence to be able to handle such a traffic volume.

Regarding the monitoring: Not all traffic is being monitored. Just a very small amount is monitored through small snapshots, based on IP numbers, port numbers and the like. And once a violation is seen, that combination of IP/port-numbers is blocked. And that block is not even permanent, it's released after a few days or somewhat longer. That's how it works in China, pretty well known, that people report that the connection worked, and it suddenly stopped working.

Of course, for each created block, they will try to find out who is behind those connections. Have to many "failures" and you can expect the police showing up.

Be aware, this mechanism is already working at many places around the world.

Even EU countries do have such a technical measure in place at every ISP, though with the restriction ("a box security services controlled") that it can only be activated based court-order.

And what do you think about the ME ? The law states that all communication must be tappable by the government, so expect Voice, Whats-app, Telegram, etc, to be monitored, despite those companies claiming end-to-end encryption. Yep, end-to-end encryption, however, the keys being leaked to the government at the phone level ..... For example, when you bring a sim lock free EU purchased phone into the ME, it'll stop working after a few weeks, because that device does not have the leaking keys feature available. ME Telco's aren't allowed to let such a device continue on their network .....

So, yeah, there is much more behind the scene, than what is being proclaimed on Social Media.

[johnny lightning]

Now for the technically illiterate, like me, what the hell is a TOR, where do I find one and how do I use it?

[Alexandra]

Do you think tor orbot vpn will duck their shite.

There is no such thing as "Orbot VPN". Orbot is not a VPN client, it is a Tor client for Android. See the previous answer about Tor.

its the only vpn ive had out of many that never showed a dns leak.

You can avoid DNS leaks completely by switching to static DNS settings instead of relying on your ISP to assign it via DHCP.

Since DNS requests and replies are transmitted in plaintext UDP, I suggest switching to DNS over HTTPS instead. Firefox already has this built in but on system level it's nice to have something like DNSCrypt or cloudflared.

DNS leaks are only a thing if you use ISP assigned DNS servers. You can literally use any other provider to fix leaks but stepping it up a notch by running DNS queries over HTTPS is much recommended.

there are no boxes in existence to be able to handle such a traffic volume.

Not all traffic is being monitored.

There are several locations worldwide, the most well known are those operated by Americans.

It is not only possible but it is also reality. We know from the Snowden documents that in 2013 a total of 75% of U.S. internet traffic was monitored. Since then that number has increased.

once a violation is seen, that combination of IP/port-numbers is blocked. And that block is not even permanent, it's released after a few days or somewhat longer. That's how it works in China, pretty well known, that people report that the connection worked, and it suddenly stopped working.

Different cities in China block different things. The Chinese firewall is not homogenous.

And what do you think about the ME ? The law states that all communication must be tappable by the government, so expect Voice, Whats-app, Telegram, etc, to be monitored, despite those companies claiming end-to-end encryption. Yep, end-to-end encryption, however, the keys being leaked to the government at the phone level ..... For example, when you bring a sim lock free EU purchased phone into the ME, it'll stop working after a few weeks, because that device does not have the leaking keys feature available. ME Telco's aren't allowed to let such a device continue on their network .....

Can you please cite the Cambodian law that states that all communication must be tappable by the government? Or if it’s foreign laws how is it relevant to Cambodian surveillance?

WhatsApp and Telegram doesn't have end-to-end encryption enabled by default. You have to go out of your way to specifically enable it for a conversation, and most people don't.

Now for the technically illiterate, like me, what the hell is a TOR, where do I find one and how do I use it?

The Onion Routing project uses onion routing to anonymize network traffic. Messages are encapsulated in multiple layers of encryption and decrypting the traffic is like peeling an onion.

You've probably heard of the so called "darknet", most of which exists on the Tor network. You can download Tor clients from the official Tor Project website. It's completely free and open source and operated by volunteers, disregard anything that claims otherwise. https://www.torproject.org/

[Bong Burgundy]

Twitter:
Kevin J Doyle
@doyle_kevin
Told by very good authority on this matter that NIG is incapable of instituting the level of monitoring/filtering of online material required under so-called ‘national security’ provisions. Told that it is not technically possible/feasible to institute, and that NIG appears..1/2
....to be a false flag designed to give impression that MPTC is doing something to control online content because ministry is under pressure from senior ruling party officials who are asking “can’t you block it?” 2/2

[upstage2]

Considering how incapable ISP were to mitigate the previous dDOS attacks, this statement would not come as a surprise
Quite frankly, most ITs here are fat & illiterate and should be given the same treatment as policemen

[Orichá]

Wow, you guys are all very knowledgeable.

Still, I find it hard to understand how this single gateway will actually operate despite your best efforts. However, the implication of the above commenting is that the U.S. and Chinese governments are already doing this at home, and their internet is not slowed down. Am I wrong?

I don't really care anymore, I've kind of shrugged my shoulders about all this. As long as it doesn't slow things down... I'll take my chances....

And personally, I think they will be focusing on monitoring Khmer society and local language stuff, and most or all farang blabber will be overlooked entirely since nothing any of us says ever has even the slightest effect on local much less international affairs, haha... (nobody reads this stuff in other words...) ...so, don't bother wasting your time with a Tor browser or VPN unless you have super-high-speed internet already... cuz all that geeky stuff just slows things down... Tor browser is only actually useful for drug and arms dealers, spooks and sexual predators... You may just as well turn yourselves in...

But here is an article about the Cambodian plan in the Bangkok Post:

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... ssion-tool