[socialmedia] Italy blocks are less friendly, FYI

Wed Mar 24 08:23:26 PDT 2021

Hi Greg:
No complaints from Italian followers, only some German ones asking when
they'll be able to connect with PG again (2027 I guess).
Regards
Laura

Em ter., 23 de mar. de 2021 às 20:31, Greg Newby via socialmedia <
socialmedia at lists.pglaf.org> escreveu:

> Hi social media team. I wonder whether there have been new complaints from
> people in Italy?
>
> Below is my response to someone who was unable to reach www.gutenberg.org.
> In a nutshell, it appears that network route poisoning is being used,
> rather than DNS hijacking. Or some sort of combination... the result is a
> "connection refused," rather than a law enforcement message.
>
> Please let me know if further reports arrive or if there is other evidence
> of different techniques. There still isn't anything PG can do about this,
> but it's good for me to know what's going on so helpdesk inquiries may be
> handled.
>
> Thanks, and thanks as always for your great work tending to PG's social
> media!
>   Greg
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Greg Newby <gbnewby at pglaf.org>
> To: Mauro Scomparin <scompo at protonmail.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2021 13:26:45 -0700
> Subject: Re: Connection refused visiting gutenberg.org
> Thank you very much for these additional investigations. Since you are
> getting the right IP address, this is not the same DNS hijacking we heard
> about earlier.
>
> On that earlier situation, people trying to visit www.gutenberg.org were
> redirected to a page by Italian legal authorities. We've never had any
> official communication about this situation, and as mentioned have no
> personnel, activity or presence in Italy.
>
> The new situation seems to be more of a routing issue, than DNS, with your
> traffic being routed to a black hole. It's unfortunate, because as you
> experienced it makes it look like Project Gutenberg is offline.
>
> If you uncover anything additional, please let us know. Meanwhile, it
> sounds like you are already familiar with methods such as tor or VPNs or
> proxy servers, which may be helpful.
>
> Sorry for the difficulty, and that there is nothing for Project Gutenberg
> to do about it.
>
> Best,
>   Greg Newby
>
> On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 05:51:15PM +0000, Mauro Scomparin wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I've tried with another connection and have had no problems viewing the
> site.
> >
> > It's not a sporadic case, it looks like it's a systemic issue.
> >
> > I have looked around for tools and diagnosed the problem a bit more.
> >
> > Both from my phone and my landline connection the traceroute to the
> domain name goes nowhere.
> > The phone is rerouted too many times to somewhere and it errors for
> hopping around too much.
> > The landline just redirects to localhost and closes immediately.
> >
> > Nslookup returns the correct IP both for v4 and v6.
> >
> > It looks like the DNS is being poisoned somehow from both ISPs (they are
> 2 different ones) on my home and phone connection.
> >
> > Looking around I've found out that there was an injunction to ISPs to
> block project Gutenberg between actually fishy sites, after all
> investigation for copyright infringement from the beginning of 2020. So it
> looks like you were exactly right about hijacking.
> >
> > The wierd thing it's that usually there's a notice from authorities
> saying a site is blocked and why, with Gutenberg it looks like it's just a
> bad connection.
> >
> > It's really bad when who decide for others it's ignorant about what's
> actually going on, and, sadly stuff like this is too common where I live
> lately...
> >
> > I guess it's just another reason to use tor.
> >
> > Thank you very much for being so helpful and patient about this issue.
> >
> > Mauro Scomparin
> >
> > -------- Messaggio originale --------
> > On 23 mar 2021, 16:00, Greg Newby < gbnewby at pglaf.org> ha scritto:
> > Hi, Mauro. I saw your note in github.
> > We did have some brief outages with [www.gutenberg.org](<a href=)">
> https://www.gutenberg.org,">[www.gutenberg.org](https://<a href=)">
> https://www.gutenberg.org, but they were sporadic. If you are still
> unable to connect, then something else is going on.
> > Let's start with confirming that this applies to http and https, with
> different browsers, and that you are getting a correct IP address.
> > To accomplish this, please try to visit [www.gutenberg.org](http://<a
> href=)">http://www.gutenberg.org and [www.gutenberg.org](https://<a
> href=)">https://www.gutenberg.org
> > Try with at least two browsers.
> > Do you have alternate Internet connections (i.e., mobile v. home v.
> work) to try? Please do, if so.
> > Finally, let's make sure you are getting to the right IP address. Try a
> command like 'nslookup [www.gutenberg.org](http://<a href=)'">
> www.gutenberg.org' to confirm you are getting 152.19.134.47 or
> 2610:28:3090:3000:0:bad:cafe:47 (or similar - we have a couple of
> addresses). If you are getting an IPv6 address, we can try using IPv4, such
> as:
> > ping -4 www.gutenberg.org
> > If all of this looks good, we'll try to additional diagnostics to see
> where the interruption is occurring.
> > These are a lot of diagnostics, and you might figure things out with
> just a few of them. Since you posted your original inquiry on github, I am
> assuming you have some technical knowledge (or can find instructions) for
> what's above. Write back if you are stuck.
> > Because you are in Italy, my first guess (if the trouble persists) is
> the DNS hijacking we have already heard about. If this is happening, you
> will get an incorrect IP address, and commands like traceroute will go
> elsewhere.
> > I do hope this helps, and appreciate you getting in touch.
> > Best regards,
> > Greg Newby
> > On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 02:02:20AM +0000, Mauro Scomparin wrote:
> > > Hi, I've previously posted on gitHub here:
> > > https://github.com/gbnewby/gutenbergsite/issues/9.
> > >
> > > I was asking about problems connecting to [www.gutenberg.org](https://<a
> href=)">https://www.gutenberg.org/ and I was told to use this email.
> Sorry for asking there directly.
> > >
> > > I'm able to connect to the site with a proxy and with tor but using my
> landline ADSL and mobile data I'm just getting a connection refused error,
> no messages from law enforcement for bloking the IP or similar stuff.
> > >
> > > Mauro Scomparin
> _______________________________________________
> socialmedia mailing list
> socialmedia at lists.pglaf.org
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>
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