from Hacker News

Howto: Block Amazon and any site using Amazon Web Services

by dzuc on 7/15/19, 3:17 PM with 81 comments

  • by InvaderFizz on 7/15/19, 4:54 PM

    Reminds me of about three years ago, a buddy who does Cybersecurity for a very large military base was tasked with blocking AWS from their network due to porn.

    He found it quite humorous, warned them of the consequences, got everything in writing(including his warnings), and executed his orders.

    The base commander was not amused and the blocks were removed in about 12 hours. Unfortunately, the responsible party never suffered more than egg on their face for the stupidity.

    They tried to shift blame to my buddy, but he had dotted his i's and crossed his t's. He did get a nice one-on-one with the Base Commander, where he was able to lay everything out.

  • by yfiapo on 7/15/19, 4:06 PM

    Mmmkay. Have fun with that.

    The attempt is also incomplete. I suspect this would miss ranges advertised through AWS's BYOIP (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-byoi...) option. It would definitely miss ranges advertised through companies' own datacenters and serviced in the backend by AWS.

  • by whinehands on 7/15/19, 4:06 PM

    This doesn't block any site using AWS, only sites which are fronted by a server hosted within AWS.

  • by Lendal on 7/15/19, 5:26 PM

    There is a large community of people here in the US who block every company that does bad things.

    Yes I'm talking about the Amish. But even in Amish society, there is politics and people who do Bad Things. Fortunately there are plenty of uninhabited mountaintops left that one can go and live on to maintain a clean conscience. But if we do that, then aren't we turning our backs on the world by not helping it? So now we'd need to come back to civilization and live amongst the unwashed masses once more.

    There's no way to live a perfectly good and blameless life.

  • by maxwellito on 7/15/19, 4:12 PM

    I find the initiative interesting, at least to realise how much of our daily browsing is hosted on AWS. I will give a go for sure!

  • by lowlevel on 7/15/19, 4:56 PM

    Wouldn't it be easier to just turn off wifi and unplug the ethernet cable?

  • by floatboth on 7/15/19, 4:22 PM

    > Counter-intuitively, AWS makes it very easy to do this! They publish and continuously update a list of IP ranges

    It's not like any legitimate company could keep their IP address ranges private (other than by using seemingly unrelated shell companies) :)

  • by ryanmercer on 7/15/19, 4:28 PM

    Wouldn't blocking stuff using AWS block like, a significant chunk of the internet?

  • by parliament32 on 7/15/19, 10:44 PM

    I'd rather do this with Cloudflare. Amazon may be naughty but CF is just evil: trying to normalize a MITM-as-a-service protection-racket as a business model is bad for everyone involved.

  • by t0mbstone on 7/15/19, 5:04 PM

    And to get around this, simply route all your traffic through Cloudflare...

  • by supergauntlet on 7/15/19, 4:03 PM

    I mean I get the idea and all, but considering half the internet runs on AWS is this even feasible? Your day-to-day internet use would be crippled. Wouldn't it be better to spend the effort on writing letters to politicians or better yet campaigning yourself? (I'm assuming this is being posted because of the prime day walkouts today)

  • by artursapek on 7/15/19, 4:22 PM

    I imagine the guys building AWS are treated pretty well, compared to their warehouse guys.

  • by tambre on 7/15/19, 4:10 PM

    This tutorial's of limited use to 30% of users, who have IPv6.

  • by nautilus12 on 7/15/19, 5:24 PM

    Half the internet would be unusable, lol.

  • by RaptorJ on 7/15/19, 7:24 PM

    Another of 2-3 stories about the Amazon strike deleted from the front page of Hacker news, it's hard to not be conspiratorial about this.

  • by e-m-p on 7/15/19, 6:47 PM

    Do you realize how many companies run on AWS?

  • by tanilama on 7/15/19, 4:36 PM

    loll, good luck.

  • by tracer4201 on 7/15/19, 4:37 PM

    Oh boy, another one of the daily anti-FAANG posts. Amazon is evil and should be boycotted - usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP (i.e. my in-laws).

    Good luck blocking AWS - and whatever percentage of the internet running on it.

  • by benologist on 7/15/19, 4:09 PM

    We could start by shunning AWS content when their $200k+ salaried employees are posting their latest announcements on HN while their unsalaried, not-employed coworkers in the warehouses are sprinting to and from a piss break trying not to be fired.