[HN Gopher] Show HN: Wa-tunnel - HTTP Tunneling through Whatsapp
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Show HN: Wa-tunnel - HTTP Tunneling through Whatsapp
Side project tunneling a TCP port through WhatsApp, can be useful
on airplanes or any WiFi/carrier that has unlimited social network
data limits. Appreciate feedback :)
Author : aleixrodriala
Score : 413 points
Date : 2022-11-12 01:17 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Nice idea, congrats to OP. Sadly some people here thinks "if I
| pay for data I should be free using it the way I want". As others
| explained carriers create plans (price/data/unitOfTime) based on
| their antenna capacity. If too many people cheats to
| torrent/4K/whatever, the carriers will need to readjust the plans
| for the system continuing to works (= prices will go up). I love
| FOSS, stop being selfish and think of collective benefit.
| [deleted]
| ghgr wrote:
| > If too many people cheats to torrent/4K/whatever, the
| carriers will need to readjust the plans for the system
| continuing to works (= prices will go up)
|
| This hypothesis assumes that carriers can increase prices and
| the public will still pay them. If so, it follows that they are
| now leaving money on the table, which sounds unlikely.
|
| I think it was Tim Hardford who wrote about something similar
| in his book "The Undercover Economist", in the context of the
| spectrum auctions in the different countries.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Maybe I wasn't clear enough, my argument is carriers will
| need to install and maintain new equipment. That's what would
| drive price increase, not laying money on a table. M
| neonsunset wrote:
| If a particular zone is overloaded, the carriers will for sure
| throttle usually just the offending people. As much as I
| support the argument in its general meaning, the carriers and
| ISPs especially in the US are probably the last thing anyone
| should vouch for given monopolistic policies, total market
| control and insane prices.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Nice!
|
| Any chance this was inspired by "Wikipedia over WhatsApp"?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31463249
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| I got the idea myself on a bar, did a quick look online and
| didnt find anything, later on when I had it built I found that
| 8 years ago this guy did a similar one:
| https://github.com/matiasinsaurralde/facebook-tunnel but
| probably wont work since its using curl
| cto_official wrote:
| One question.. if Whatsapp is encrypting data how are you able to
| decrypt the packet easily ?
| jfjdskldhjfcj wrote:
| well, it's encrypted e2e only in 1:1 chats.
|
| groups is weird, the media have the index encrypted but the
| contents use a shared app key.
|
| commercial accounts are also odd. it's encrypted with the
| business and whatsapp keys, so employees from both can read the
| messages.
|
| then here there's the api issues. you are not using a full
| client, but sending your access token plus the plain text
| message for it to be encrypted on their servers.
|
| even worse, in this example it's not even you using the api,
| but you are using twillo's api, who then uses metabook's api
| for whatsbook. so it's plain text all the way across those.
| public_defender wrote:
| I love this as a check on zero-rating. I think that Facebook
| zero-rating in emerging economies will prove to have an abysmal
| toxic legacy. Anything that can tax the value proposition by e.g.
| forcing a lot of data through the pipe should be encouraged as a
| way to generally decrease the prevalence of the practice.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Yes, please support net neutrality, it is very important.
| graderjs wrote:
| This is like the 2020s version of phreaking
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Fun, but when the comparison is unlimited WhatsApp versus "not
| many gigabytes" of other data, my first question is what speed
| this goes. How long does it take to transfer a gigabyte over
| WhatsApp?
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| Depends on the throttle you add and then risking to get your
| WhatsApp account banned, but can be used to surf when you have
| no data or use other apps which can be useful, not intended for
| large files downloading or video streaming although got like
| 300kbps which wasn't too bad
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Nice, seems useful for airplanes.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Did you click the link ? Planes are mentioned at the second
| sentence.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Yep
| Matt3o12_ wrote:
| Have you tried different throttles? Did you get any whatsapp
| account(s) banned at higher speed?
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| Yes, used different messages max sizes, with 2000
| characters got the best speed but got the account banned,
| using 20000 is a great middle term and not banned for now,
| could get banned anyway, its an educational project
| cyclotron3k wrote:
| Could you try encoding data as images for better
| bandwidth (and probably worse latency)?
| allanrbo wrote:
| Images are often blocked on the free WhatsApp on
| airplanes
| cyclotron3k wrote:
| I wonder how that's implemented if all the traffic is
| encrypted. Presumably images are sent via a different
| domain or IP address?
| projektfu wrote:
| During the Facebook outage of a few years ago, WhatsApp
| messages still worked but I couldn't send an image. I
| think images are uploaded to Facebook-related servers and
| messages are through a separate real-time infrastructure,
| and it's likely that the message includes the fuzzy
| thumbnail and a url for the image from the other server.
| blowski wrote:
| Message size, perhaps.
| ISL wrote:
| And volume.
| codetrotter wrote:
| I was on a boat recently where WhatsApp was free to use,
| and you had to pay to use the rest of the internet. You
| could send and receive messages but attempting to send an
| image, which wasn't even all that big in size, did not
| work on the free connection.
|
| It must be either message size, or WhatsApp using a
| separate host name for attachments.
| Thlom wrote:
| They probably use some deep packet inspection on shore
| side firewall which blocks audio/video. Quite normal on
| congested satellite connections. Most "next-generation"
| firewall providers have predefined signatures for
| WhatsApp file transfer.
| zorr wrote:
| I would not be surprised if the free WA messaging is
| implemented by whitelisting the signaling ports and
| domains (XMPP or similar) which only handle text content
| and small inline attachments. While larger images are
| uploaded and fetched out of band (HTTP or similar) with
| only a URL or reference passing over the signaling
| channel.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Perhaps the client knows it's on a free internet tire and
| blocks anything other than text.
|
| Much easier to implement than encrypted package
| inspection.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Using less characters got you banned? I don't understand
| why that would happen. I would think using more
| characters would be more likely to get you banned since
| it's less like what normal users do.
| mkagenius wrote:
| Its in the README - it increases the the number of
| messages.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| It looks like you're using base64 encoding. If WhatsApp
| allows an extended alphabet then you might be able to switch
| to base85 for a slight performance bump.
| kevincox wrote:
| Since WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted you can probably
| just send bibary data. Stick a prefix on it so that the
| real client is guaranteed to ignore it as corrupted.
|
| I think the only risk is that if you have a real client
| running it reports the invalid messages and WhatsApp uses
| this as a signal to van your account.
| staindk wrote:
| Note AFAIK WA is e2e encrypted BUT they can flag any
| weird looking messages (weird patterns etc) to see and
| review their contents.
|
| So I think Meta/WA can opt to decrypt any suspicious
| messages they come across.
| bmicraft wrote:
| How would that work? Do they send a request to your phone
| to decrypt it for them?
| wongarsu wrote:
| I'd imagine the app just flags suspicious messages and
| sends them directly to review, in parallel to sending the
| encrypted message to the receiver
| preisschild wrote:
| Meta/Facebook is the last company I would trust regarding
| their E2EE. They probably have a key themselves.
| vital_beach wrote:
| any CFAA concerns when used in the wrong place and found out
| (airplanes)?
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| I'm not encouraging anyone to use this by saying this but
| WhatsApp traffic it's encrypted and the traffic through the
| socket its also encrypted, I guess you can't get in trouble for
| sending and recieving lots of weird messages? Again, intended
| for educational usage
| fragmede wrote:
| that's a lot of words to say "yes, an overzealous prosecutor
| could try and make a case using the CFAA", but that's because
| the CFAA is a bullshit overly-broad law. that it's bullshit
| doesn't change the threat to the prosecuted, unfortunately.
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| you are totally right
| odo1242 wrote:
| not CFAA concerns, but you'd probably be in violation of the
| WhatsApp TOS: "... (d) interfere with or disrupt the safety,
| security, confidentiality, integrity, availability, or
| performance of our Services; ..."
|
| disclaimer: IANAL
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| Yes, in the own project there is a disclaimer that using this
| software might get your WhatsApp account banned so use with
| caution, and anyways is just a fun project for educational
| purposes. But good to know ofc
| netsharc wrote:
| Since WhatsApp sends binaries (images, documents like PDFs,
| probably Zip files as well), I wonder if this proxy also encodes
| the data as binaries. It recompresses JPEGs though, although
| there is an option to turn that off, and in any case the
| recompression probably happens client (sender) side.
| jesprenj wrote:
| I was on a ferry ship from Italy to Greece where they had paid
| sattelite Internet via WiFi. The WiFi AP was at first a captive
| portal. You could buy Internet access with cash at the reception
| or you could pay online. For that they had to enable access to
| stripe.com. But stripe uses fastly CDN, so they enabled one
| specific fastly endpoint that stripe uses. You had direct IP
| traffic to this specific IP address. reddit also uses fastly CDN.
| So with a /etc/hosts hack I could load reddit pages for free. Not
| images though, as they are hosted by imgur.
|
| I assume one could also create a tunnel over reddit chat connect
| to the Internet, but I never did that.
|
| By default, reddit did not work though, as their fastly CDN
| endpoint is different from stripe's, also the stripe's endpoint
| did not correctly sign TLS for reddit.com. But setting a Host
| header of old.reddit.com on that fastly IP successfully
| downloaded the page.
|
| When I still had phone network by the coast, I set up iodine IP
| over DNS tunnel, but it did not work, even though DNS requests
| worked on that WiFi. Maybe they had some sort of protection
| specifically for iodine.
| bythckr wrote:
| Pls explain how you did that. I would like to try it for
| myself.
| jesprenj wrote:
| First of all I was doing all of this on my touchscreen phone,
| which made me give up soon, as my laptop was packed in the
| garage.
|
| I used a program called Packet capture that registers as a
| VPN connection in Android and routes all traffic trough
| itself. I saw some external IPs with TLS data when visiting
| the captive portal: http://upload.4a.si/pcap.jpg
|
| When I sent a request to one IP address, I learned from the
| response that I've reached a fastly endpoint. The response
| was an error page, claiming they host no one with this
| domain. I knew from a talk by reddit sysadmins that they use
| the fastly CDN, so I added a Host header with a value of
| old.reddit.com:
|
| curl -ikH Host:\ old.reddit.com
| https://151.101.0.176/r/Slovenia.json
|
| Then I added a rule in software AdAway for Android (this one
| is used for DNS blacklisting to remove ads based on DNS
| queries and requires root access - changes /etc/hosts AFAIK)
| to overwrite old.reddit.com to this IP address.
|
| I can't remember how I tricked the web browser into ignoring
| invalid certs.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| There's a trick called "Domain fronting" (ab)using CDN's like
| that which is useful.
|
| Tor's "meek" pluggable transport uses it, but only supports a
| couple of cdns as you need to run infra behind the CDN which
| costs money.
|
| As for Iodine, I used to run a few public DNS tunnel servers
| with it for people. Its a pain in the ass to get working
| reliably.
| userbinator wrote:
| The word "proxy" used to refer to a human, and this is
| essentially an automated version of that. The automation of
| messaging a friend on WhatsApp and asking him to go to a website
| and send you the information.
| comprev wrote:
| Proxy simply means doing an action on behalf of another entity.
| This could be a human, a computer or even entire country
| ("proxy war")
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I believe proxy can still refer to a human. For example in
| voting.
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| That would be the human version of this, awesome to know :)
| dsatjkfkhduif wrote:
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Termux is such an awesome hidden gem for tunneling cell data. My
| carrier doesn't allow wifi hotspot use on my phone (and android
| happily enforces their rules), but I can run sshd on termux and
| SOCKS5 proxy to my laptop with ssh. It's instant wifi tethering
| to my laptop without my carrier knowing or blocking it. I can
| even use adb networking and a USB cable if the laptop can't
| connect to the phone over wifi for some reason.
| graton wrote:
| The carriers will oftentimes use the TTL to determine if you
| are tethering or not. So if you adjust the default TTL to 65 on
| your tethered device it may work.
| rektide wrote:
| i've done a bunch of dev work at home, ssh'ed & SOCKS5'ed from
| my main pc into a work laptop right next to it, connected to
| the same switch via gigabit, and i have to say: I am shocked
| what an abysmally slow & awful experience it has been. it
| cannot handle the parallelism of dealing with a lot of requests
| hardly at all. it's absurdly poorly performing.
|
| it's still my go-to for sharing one system's vpn, but wow oh
| wow oh wow do i wish i knew some good alternatives. i really
| want something that works over ssh, but i begin to think that
| ssh is an inescapably bad starting point for these efforts.
| NotPractical wrote:
| Kind of absurd that your OS (which is supposed to always be
| acting in your best interest) enforces these arbitrary carrier
| data limits -- it's objectively anti-user behavior and wouldn't
| exist if Android were truly FOSS (emphasis on "free").
|
| This solution is great for permanently bootloader-locked phones
| (which is unfortunately, most phones).
|
| Alternatively, if installing a custom OS is an option, most
| Android forks remove the tethering restrictions. I use and
| highly recommend GrapheneOS [1] if you have a supported phone
| (Pixels only as of now). DivestOS and LineageOS have much wider
| device support. ProtonAOSP and CalyxOS are other options for
| Pixels and a few others.
|
| [1] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/70
| [deleted]
| jonas21 wrote:
| This isn't anti-user behavior. It's anti-asshole behavior.
| There are plenty of plans designed for tethering if you care
| to purchase them.
|
| Tethering on a plan that doesn't allow it is like showing up
| at an all-you-can-eat buffet and leaving with a backpack full
| of food.
| public_defender wrote:
| This analogy is no good. Plans have data limits. It is not
| an all-you-can-eat buffet. Tethering restrictions are an
| attempt to paywall features which the device can do without
| harming anyone else on the network.
|
| A better analogy is a gas station which charges more for
| gas that goes into sports cars than gas that goes into
| minivans.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Yeah, they do. Big V8s usually require premium gas.
|
| Premium gas costs more. Race cars need race gas -- that
| costs even more.
| public_defender wrote:
| Does the gas station check what car is pulling up, or do
| you choose based on what you think works best for the
| engine?
| imiric wrote:
| I agree with you that it's a bad analogy. But to be fair,
| all-you-can-eat buffets are not really all-you-can-eat,
| and will kick you out if you try to consume more than
| what they calculated a regular consumer does. All service
| providers do this when they falsely advertise "unlimited"
| anything.
|
| Where ISPs cross the line is by trying to also enforce
| _how_ I can consume the data I'm paying for. Having plans
| that restrict tethering is consumer-hostile, plain and
| simple. Whether I'm tethering or not has no relation to
| how much data I consume. They can continue to restrict
| bandwidth and data limits if I go overboard, but I'll be
| damned if I allow them to tell me how I can use it.
|
| So if we're going with the buffet analogy, then it's like
| them saying I can only use a fork to eat, as someone
| mentioned above.
| causality0 wrote:
| No, it's like using my shower nozzle to fill up my bath tub
| because I didn't want to pay the water company an extra
| "soaking" fee.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| More like being the dipshit who fills his pool with well
| water and dries out the neighborhood.
| varenc wrote:
| On that topic... US federal regulations[0] limit shower
| heads to a flow rate of 2.5 gallons per minute (GPM). And
| California[1] limits them to 1.8 GPM! This seems somewhat
| analogous to the mobile data discussion.
|
| _" You are paying for a water service, what does it
| matter how the water is consumed?"_ Though of course
| there are big differences. An obvious one is that water
| companies aren't profiting off these restrictions like
| mobile operators at least partially are. And since water
| is either heavily regulated by or entirely ran by
| governments, the cost to the consumer doesn't necessarily
| represent the true cost.
|
| (The California restriction even seems reasonably well
| enforced. When buying a 2.5 GPM shower head on Amazon[2]
| you'll get an error if you try to ship it to a California
| address. Most eBay sellers enforce this as well, though
| not quite all of them.)
|
| [0] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-27280/p-56
|
| [1] https://www.build.com/ca-
| compliant/c133273#:~:text=Residenti...
|
| [2] https://smile.amazon.com/showerhead-2.5GPM-that-wont-
| ship-to...
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I'm paying for 25G of data a month. How I want to use it
| should be entirely up to me.
| Grimburger wrote:
| You are paying for a mobile data connection, what does it
| matter how the bandwidth is consumed?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If your use affects everyone else in the area, it
| matters. It's like having a bonfire in California in fire
| season; sure, it's your property, and your firewood, but
| you can't pretend it can't possibly affect someone else's
| enjoyment of theirs.
| judge2020 wrote:
| There is a limited amount of throughput a tower can
| handle, both on its backhaul and antennas. Depending on
| what you're doing over that tethered connection, you
| might be using up 2x-10x the throughput they provisioned
| for "you"; if enough people tether at once during rush
| hour, there's going to be a significant drop in speeds
| for both you and people just trying to use their phones
| normally.
|
| This is why that, when phones tether, those tethered
| packets are routed separately so that the cell carrier
| can throttle them when needed to maintal quality of
| service for everyone else.
|
| By tethering/tunneling through your normal connection,
| they can't do this, and if this became an epidemic they
| would either need to do thorough DPI and heuristics to
| detect and block the tethering/ban the user, or over-
| provision their towers to handle the varied traffic
| volumes of both regular cell phone activity and people
| watching 4k Netflix on their TV through their phone.
| deniska wrote:
| Fine.
|
| _launches bittorrent client on the phone_
| morsch wrote:
| Somehow other countries make it work.
| netr0ute wrote:
| This is technically true, but the issue is that it
| essentially keeps us form progressing technologically.
| Therefore, it's fine to ignore their rules.
| judge2020 wrote:
| In general a few dozen or even thousand techies on HN
| doing this across the US isn't going to change anything,
| but it's obvious that we'd eventually have a huge problem
| if everyone moving into a new apartment or house decided
| to forego wired internet and instead stream exclusively
| over a hidden tether to their phone. This is why, when
| actual fully-supported home internet over 5g is available
| in an area[0,1], availability tends to be limited and
| people still sometimes get deprioritized.
|
| 0: https://www.t-mobile.com/home-internet
|
| 1: https://www.verizon.com/5g/home/
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Because you're not buying that. The use cases used to
| build the solution have to make assumptions. Microsoft
| Outlook uses exponentially more network resources to
| fetch and send email than a purpose designed mobile app,
| for example.
|
| You can get plans that support tethering or mobile LANs -
| they aren't even that expensive. Carriers will usually
| prioritize those connections lower than public safety or
| mobile phone connections to ensure better user
| experience. LTE and 5G fixed home plans are an easy
| example of this available to consumers.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| If your business model isn't compatible with the freedom of
| your customers, you should generally find a new business
| model, rather than working to reduce that freedom.
|
| See also: modern intellectual "property" laws &
| enforcement, the businesses that push for it (typically
| large companies with a wealth of IP), the organizations
| that facilitate the control of information (governments,
| Microsoft, Google, Apple, Netflix, etc.), and the business
| models that depend on it.
|
| There are cases where the benefits are worth a reduction in
| freedom, but this ain't it.
| telchar wrote:
| I'd say it's more like showing up at an all-you-can-eat
| buffet and eating with a fork. It's not anything that one
| should be charged extra for. If the bandwidth is the issue,
| they can charge realistic prices for bandwidth.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Perhaps a better analogy is showing up to an all-you-can-
| eat buffet and grabbing 20 brownies to take home. Sure,
| it doesn't change much, but if everyone did that there'd
| be a problem and the service provider should probably
| police it.
| imiric wrote:
| No, that's a worse analogy. The issue is not with the
| amount consumed. We're well aware that there's no such
| thing as all-you-can-eat or "unlimited" anything. A Matt
| Stonie would be banned from any all-you-can-eat buffet.
|
| What's egregious is ISPs also enforcing _how_ I'm allowed
| to consume the data I'm paying for. So the fork analogy
| is much more appropriate.
| doorman2 wrote:
| The cell network is property of the carrier. It's in the
| user's best interest that they have access to the cell
| network, which means playing by the carrier's rules. The user
| is free to pick a different cell carrier or find a work
| around.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Tethering is mostly a relic of the late 2000's when 3G
| cellular networks were pretty sketchy; if enough people
| tethered back then it'd put a huge strain on the network for
| anyone on that tower. Nowadays the capacity is already
| planned out with tethering in mind (all tier A plans, eg.
| direct-from-carrier plans, have some amount of tethering),
| but it gets pretty murky when you consider people trying to
| tether on their MVNOs network at peak times/rush hour, really
| straining the capacity allocated to that MVNO, degrading the
| service for others.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Even with large accounts the carriers still impose limits
| on tethering. If you're getting unlimited tethering, it's
| probably actually a "pool" of data."
|
| Even there, there's some differences as prioritization
| works differently when you are using pool resources.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Really?, Which country are you talking about? Here is
| Australia, I can tether with Aldi Mobile, a reseller of
| the Telstra mobile network. Works fine in Android and
| iPhone.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| To be fair Android as in ASOP is truly FOSS but because all
| drivers are baked into the kernel for reasons better lost to
| the sands of time, Vendor/Carrier pairs can enforce what they
| like in their required custom builds. This is what Google's
| project Fushia was/is supposed to solve.
| phonedog wrote:
| Not since Project Treble they're not.
|
| The more pressing issue is that bootloader unlocking isn't
| as ubiquitous as one might like.
| londons_explore wrote:
| adb shell settings put global tether_dun_required 0
|
| Problem solved - your ISP now allows tethering.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Thank You! I used to do this on my rooted phone back in the
| day. I've been trying to figure out how to run sshd again, but
| there seems to be a lot of dodgy stuff on the play store I was
| never comfortable running.
|
| This is it!
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| Yh it's awesome this project could run on termux without having
| to modify much or even iodine https://github.com/yarrick/iodine
| which is another awesome tool to avoid network restrictions.
| derwiki wrote:
| Wow, thanks for the iodine throwback! I distinctly remember
| using this on United flights in the early 2010s via my
| Slicehost server.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| This is what I did on my jailbroken iPhone 3G way back in the
| day when AT&T wanted to force you onto a special plan for
| tethering.
| easrng wrote:
| omg another person who does this!
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| Couldn't find any other library that actually worked with
| HTTPS traffic also, do you have any? Thanks :)
| easrng wrote:
| Sorry, I don't quite understand what you're asking. Did you
| reply to the wrong person?
| hparadiz wrote:
| This is why being able to root your devices is so important.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| No. We have to make OS system that is free of bloat and craps
| by default.
| anony23 wrote:
| I don't think this requires root at all.
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| But bypassing the original restriction would.
| anony23 wrote:
| Agreed! I read the comment within the context of the
| termux setup.
| metters wrote:
| This might be a stupid question. If WhatsApp wasn't blocked in
| China and the second WhatsApp account (aka server side) was
| outside of China, could this bypass the great firewall?
| georgyo wrote:
| > If WhatsApp wasn't blocked in China
|
| The answer is yes, this could be used if WhatsApp wasn't
| blocked.
|
| But since it blocked in China, you would first need to bypass
| the firewall anyway.
| aleixrodriala wrote:
| Sure, just like any proxy though
| wolpoli wrote:
| Slightly off topic: is there a way to tunnel internet over the
| phone system on a smartphone in the event that phone works but
| internet doesn't?
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| https://github.com/spandanb/ipos
|
| I mean if this doesn't charge you up the yahoo per message,
| might be viable in a very limited circumstance?
| cpeterso wrote:
| It's built into iOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204023
| A Personal Hotspot lets you share the cellular data connection
| of your iPhone or iPad (Wi-Fi + Cellular) when you don't have
| access to a Wi-Fi network.
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| That still requires cellular data/internet and not just
| voice.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Oops. I misunderstood "the phone system on a smartphone" to
| mean the smartphone's cellular network, not using the
| smartphone as a modem connected to a landline.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| We used to call that a 56k dialup modem and when we used it it
| wouldn't be long until our parents would scream up the stairs
| "Get off the internet, I'm expecting a call!"
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You could use Slow Scan TV. There's an iOS app to try it:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sstv-slow-scan-tv/id387910013
|
| Never did IP with it, but i worked with a team that jerry
| rigged this to transmit some telemetry from a remote location
| where external data access was cutoff for several weeks using
| portable radios.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I would love a youtube/vimeo/whatever video on this. And
| someone publishing regular SS pictures like news footage or
| something otherwise particularly relevant if I was somehow in
| the middle of nowhere with an HF radio and an iphone.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Call a mate and get them to browse on your behalf
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| TCP/IP over GSM
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Oooooh... a smartphone coupler for a dial-up modem? Take my
| money!
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Analogue...
| sedatk wrote:
| Probably with a dial-up call but you'd be limited to 2400bps:
| https://superuser.com/a/748163
| [deleted]
| wolpoli wrote:
| Thanks for digging this up. It is quite a bit slower than I
| expected. At 2.4kbps, it might be enough for ssh.
| sedatk wrote:
| Just don't try to read a man page and you're good to go :)
| anamexis wrote:
| Love insightful StackExchange answers like that, thanks!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I remember trying this (Also in Latin America with Zuckerberg's
| creepy old "internet.com" initiative to make his services free in
| the third world, which is a done and over with promotion by now
| at least in Costa Rica) and realizing that ICMP/DNS tunneling was
| faster and more reliable, you can only get like half-duplex TCP
| over whatsapp messages and then the frames are limited if you're
| going to fit them in per message to like 1,024 characters (Though
| it seems you got more in there?)... DNS or ICMP tunnelling
| further works on things like getting a foothold for checking your
| email in some far flung airport network with a broken/sketchy
| payment gateway, you REALLY need to check your email, and where
| that passes but nothing else does. Then there's the risk that
| they decide to ban your SIM chip as you mention, which is like a
| 2$ mistake in such regions but if you do it on your main number
| you're risking having to tell everyone "yeah i tried to hack
| whatsapp and they blocked my old number haha" because that's what
| they've funnelled everyone into using out there with this free
| data transfer deal on that platform.
|
| By the way your implementation looks way nicer than what I was
| working with before.
| bsaul wrote:
| is there any official documentation for whatsapp api somewhere or
| is this work based on reverse-engineering only ?
| knutzui wrote:
| This uses Baileys [0] which appears to reverse-engineer the
| protocol Whatsapp uses for it's web app.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/adiwajshing/Baileys
| [deleted]
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