this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025

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Mildly Infuriating

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Saudi Arabia blocked blahaj.zone (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by fxomt@lemm.ee to c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world

235 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A couple of days ago i noticed something off with blahaj.zone. I couldn't see images posted by users on blahaj, so i thought it was a problem on their side.

Well guess fucking what? After 3 days, it was STILL broken, so i opened it and...

Blocked. They fucking blocked blahaj.zone. Actually beyond parody🤦‍♂️ Why? What was the point? there's trans content literally everywhere on lemmy. what's next, block them all? So now if i want to see a post by a user on blahaj, i have to turn on my VPN (protonvpn.com is also blocked in saudi, jfc) just to see it. Fuck this place. 🙄

I swear a couple of days ago it worked. This is a mild annoyance (hence the community) but still.

It's so over guys, MBS said no more 196 😔

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[–] viking@infosec.pub 4 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Proton works in China if you set the protocol to "stealth" in the setting, maybe that works for Saudi as well?

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Proton works in China if you set the protocol to “stealth” in the setting

With or without alternative routing?

[–] viking@infosec.pub 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Without.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Wait so the "great firewall" doesn't block Proton VPN IP addresses? That's interesting.

[–] viking@infosec.pub 1 points 1 hour ago

They don't blacklist IP addresses generally, though some are certainly blocked. But normally they run deep packet inspections and block traffic that is identified as VPN traffic based on certain header data. That's what makes the firewall "great" in the first place; many other countries simply block a range of IP addresses, and all it takes is for the VPN provider to switch the IP in their data warehouse. That's trivial and takes seconds, and many providers rotate their IPs on a regular basis to prevent blocks in the first place.

Because of the deep packet inspection, OpenVPN and wireguard as protocols are entirely useless in China whatsoever, for example. Stealth mode AFAIK is using a modified wireguard protocol that obfuscates certain headers and thereby avoids detection (for now).

[–] fxomt@lemm.ee 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

It works without stealth here, too. It's a little slow, tho. granted, i am using the free version.

[–] viking@infosec.pub 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Ah ok, I've got the paid version. If you happen to be or know a student, they offer a 50% discount through studentbeans.com, only $2.50 a month.

[–] fxomt@lemm.ee 2 points 20 hours ago

Good advice, thank you :)

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I quickly threw together a script to check which other Fediverse instances are blocked in Saudi Arabia by using Globalping. I know it's horrible, but it works so far. Will share the results once it's finished running. I'll probably also rewrite the script later.

I got the list of instances from lemmy.world: curl -s https://lemmy.world/instances | rg -o 'href="([^"]+)"' | rg -o 'https?://[^"]+' > instances.txt

#!/usr/bin/env fish

set INSTANCES "./instances.txt"
set OUTPUT_FILE "./output.txt"
set COUNTRY "saudi arabia"

for instance in (cat $INSTANCES)
  if globalping http $instance from $COUNTRY --method GET --limit 3 | rg 'Blocked URL' 2&>1
    echo "Blocked: $instance" >> blocked.txt
  end
end

I'm running tail -f blocked.txt in another terminal to monitor the results in real time.

(Yeah I know the script sucks. Don't judge me, I use fish and prefer its syntax over bash. I also use ripgrep, because I like it.)

[–] fxomt@lemm.ee 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

I can run it for you if you want. I'll post the results here

It'll be faster for me since I'm in the country itself

EDIT: This won't work. You can "ping" blahaj successfully, but only because it redirects to a gov page, and not an error. I'll have to revise the script because of that.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

EDIT: This won’t work. You can “ping” blahaj successfully, but only because it redirects to a gov page, and not an error. I’ll have to revise the script because of that.

Globalping has an HTTP method, which I use in the script:

globalping http $instance from $COUNTRY

I then use ripgrep to check if the HTTP response contains the string "Blocked URL", as you can see in the script:

| rg 'Blocked URL'

The if condition uses the exit code from ripgrep to add $instance from the for loop to the blocked.txt file.

I tested this manually and it works as intended. The script could use some optimizations though. And if you intend on running the current version, you need to lower the limit of the globalping command from 3 to 1, otherwise you will run out of credits before all 8100 instances are checked. I will rewrite this to use a globalping auth token though.

Btw I also removed the https:// part from the instance list. Just opened it up in Vim, selected everything using V-Block mode and deleted it. I don't know if that makes a difference, but I'm not sure if the Globalping command can take URLs, or if it only works with domains.

[–] fxomt@lemm.ee 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, it works for me now. I just ran it with ping instead of globalping, since i had no need to run it with that. And the script didn't work after i did that, i'm not great at shell-scripting.

I made a modification that prints the status, but it's painfully slow to check each site.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

What do you use now? Curl? wget?

[–] fxomt@lemm.ee 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Globalping, just as you wrote it with the limit being 1

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 hours ago

That should work.
I started working on a rewritten version in Rust that uses the REST API instead of the CLI tool. Once it's done, it should be a lot faster, since it can make multiple requests simultaneously. I also plan to use this for other stuff in other countries.

[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

They must have thought that admin defending a troll was the last straw as well.

[–] Doorbook@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

It is not realistic to think the saudi government cared that much about this. The way it works is someone send a request to block the site. If there are banned words including “sex” then it will be block. You can request for it to be unblock and say it’s a social media site. They have different rules. Remember reddit is not blocked.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Pro tip: Don't "click here"!

[–] fxomt@lemm.ee 14 points 2 days ago (4 children)

man that page is so fucking annoying, everything i try to open anything it's just blocked. All sites critical of islam/saudi/sauds, and alcohol/porn/and anything that they hate. Even tor and vpns are blocked, i need to use a mirror to get them, which may not always be safe (atleast for the VPN, tor has trusted mirrors)

ngl i think of running a vpn on my router, literally just not to see that fucking page anymore (and security too, ofc :) )

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 hours ago

Use Tor snowflakes. They are very resistant to censorship and many of us in the western world run the extension so that you can get access to accurate information.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 39 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Just as a heads-up: What you just wrote is an admission of a crime in SA. Everything you post on the fediverse is public. And you now know they're aware of Lemmy.
I hope you are absolutely sure whatever you're using to hide your identity is bomb-proof, and that you've never posted any identifying info under this account or any other one with the same username.

Edit: I found enough info about you in 10 minutes to dox you if I had access to SA government resources (birthday, -year, and -country, area in SA you currently live in, and very niche knowledge which at your age is likely what you're currently studying at a SA university). Be more careful, Tor doesn't do shit if you dox yourself.

[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 4 points 1 day ago

In turkey, you don't even need to bein the government to have access! They give out their private databases for confidential citizen data out like it's Christmas and they're a charity for orphaned kids with leukemia!

Simply put, never reveal anything if you're a Turk, I can be doxxed from revealing where I even lived or which day my birthday is

So, I actually lie! I lie about my real name, where I'm born and my age and birth date

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[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 146 points 2 days ago (4 children)

It sucks, but it's also one positive thing about the Fediverse - if Lemmy was a central platform, it would be completely gone for you now.

[–] fxomt@lemm.ee 77 points 2 days ago (14 children)

Yeah, thank god. I'm more baffled on why fucking saudi arabia would care about a tiny trans-ran instance on a niche software. must've been a slow day there, i guess.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 89 points 2 days ago (4 children)

youre kidding right. one of the most oppressive shitty, religion-based garbage of a country that subjugates 50% of its population and you wonder why its acting shitty?

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[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 60 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Hey at least Lemmy is becoming popular enough for the authorities to block us.

[–] dan@upvote.au 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The good thing about Lemmy is that due to its distributed and federated nature, it can't be fully blocked. You can just use a different instance and see all the same content (assuming instancea that don't block the other instances).

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[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 49 points 2 days ago (25 children)

If I were in Saudi Arabia I'd be using a VPN anyways.

Also, if I were in Saudi Arabia, I'd be trying to leave Saudi Arabia

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[–] Mwa@lemm.ee 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I didn't know Saudi can block fediverse instances

[–] fxomt@lemm.ee 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

A lot of websites are blocked here.

Porn (60,000 BLOCKED PORN SITES!), alcohol/drug stores, Gay sites (from blogs to forums, anything), anti islam websites like wikiislam, and just non-muslim religious shit in general. we have a lot of banned christian sites. And news sites like middleeasteye.net

VPNs + tor is also banned too.

For some reason, israel.com + idf.il are also blocked. weird considering saudi-israel's relationship.

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[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 32 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Is it weird this makes me proud to be a blahaj user?

Like when a transphobic government starts hating, you know you’re doing something right.

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[–] mlg@lemmy.world 32 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Lol I'd tread a bit carefully.

KSA likes to chase people and have them "disappeared" for their opinions.

I know a guy they picked up for 3 months and when he finally showed up, his poor mouth was zippered shut.

And he was an international too.

I'd look around for a solid VPN solution anyway. Useful to have in any country.

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