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Banji
Banji

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GitLab has Blocked Iran!

Today When I tried to Sign in into my GitLab account I faced this page :

Look at this :(

Alt Text
What's the reason?

Just give me a reason to accept this problem :(
There's a lot of Iranian developers and so many open-source projects ...

Thanks, GitLab and GitHub, and the open-source community to do all your best, effort, and hard work for the developers all around the world to make things easier EXCEPT IRAN(Make it hard for Iranian developers)!

🅑🅐🅝🅙🅘

Ben

Top comments (54)

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danielw profile image
Daniel Waller (he/him) • Edited

Wow that is super fucked up!
No citizen should have to suffer because two stubborn governments can not work past their differences.

Regarding Gitlab however, it might not be them directly blocking access to Iranians, but their platform service provider.
In summer of 2018 gitlab moved off of Azure and onto Google Cloud Platform. With that came an article warning users in Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria that gitlab might not be accessible to them anymore.
This is because Google says they are bound by legal restrictions arising from Department of the Treasury sanctions against US entities doing business with entities in these countries.

So it might not be a direct business decision by Gitlab to block you and other Iranians from using their services...but apparently they have no problems hosting their service with a provider that might impose those restrictions. Which is fucked up!

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danielw profile image
Daniel Waller (he/him) • Edited

All of this aside: Do you still have access to your code in some way?
Or do you at least have up-to-date local versions of all your repos on your machine?

If not, I would offer to clone your public projects from gitlab and mirror them to somewhere where you can download them.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

I can't update my projects anymore :(
I couldn't access to my project with Tor
Just tried with some VPN, it worked ...
I donno what should we do.
Github?Nope
GitLab?Nope
SO WHERE?
Damn to all of the governments who cause to happen a lot of problems for their citizens and their people ...

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katafrakt profile image
Paweł Świątkowski

Perhaps something like sr.ht/

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quinncuatro profile image
Henry Quinn

Talked to a buddy at GitLab.

Appears to be an issue with someone upstream from them.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Thank you so much Daniel for sharing your information with the community
I didn't know anything about that warning
But this problem happened suddenly, it really shocked most of the Iranian developers :(
Keep it up
Happy Coding :)

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mdhesari profile image
Mohammad Fazel

Not fair at all.

But this is how most of the websites due to US sanctions blocked iranian people.

Look it's not the iranian people who have problem with them its their government who is the target but people are getting hurt instead of their government.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Exactly, that's what I'm talking about ...

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stokry profile image
Stokry

I don't know why Gitlab didn't warn Iranian users. Have you tried contacting user support? You should use a VPN!

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Blocking iranian developers with no prior warn!
Damn

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stokry profile image
Stokry

That sucks, the only thing that comes to my mind right now, is VPN.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

But even with Tor I can't acess to my projects!

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stokry profile image
Stokry

Have you tried some VPN? We can build some rotating proxy that will bypass blocking.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Yeah I tried ProtonVPN yesterday It works :)

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holgerco profile image
MH Shamsaei

Doesn't work for me :(

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Oh, Proton doesn't work anymore on my Pop!_OS

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matinzd profile image
Matin Zadehdolatabad

I think this problem is not IP related and the account is blocked from scratch even if you use VPN .

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Yeah I think you're right :(
What the hell is going on in our damn country

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andreligne profile image
André

Stories like these are what make me run a Gitea instance on a server I control at home that mirrors all my repositories from Github - you can never be sure that you won't lose access to the account one day :/

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Yeah, you're right
After the warning of GitHub, we had to make sth like what you said(running a Gitea instance ), but we were too lazy to do it.
But it happened out of the blue, so I even hadn't enough time to take a backup from my projects :(
Sad Story
So beware about the future
Keep it up
Happy Coding :)

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quinncuatro profile image
Henry Quinn

Talked to a buddy at GitLab about this.

Appears to be something with an upstream provider.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

So what? is it Temporary or Permanently?
Do you have any further info?
Anyway, thank you for sharing your information with the community
Keep it up
Happy Coding :)

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quinncuatro profile image
Henry Quinn

I don’t have any further information. I recommend reaching out to the GitLab social media team via Twitter or something to figure out what’s going on.

And be nice, they’re already getting like vague death threats over this.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Tnx Henry Quinn for sharing your information with the community
❤️🍭
Happy Coding :)

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jep profile image
Jim

According to Wikipedia, "The Internet in Iran is managed by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Supreme Council of Cyberspace of Iran." Iran is also know to use state-sponsored cyber actors in an offensive capacity. So it's entirely possible Gitlab or their upstream provider are inadvertently blocking all of Iran as a response to suspeted malicious activity. I might be wrong, but I have the same info as everyone else. 🤷‍♂️

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banji220 profile image
Banji

It shouldn't happen suddenly :(
They have to give sometimes to developers to take a backup from their projects
Does it make sense?
That's what I'm talking about

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mahmoudajawad profile image
Mahmoud Abduljawad

I totally understand the requirement to abide by local policies by any business, and in this case it's Gitlab abiding to sanctions, if this is the case and not another. What I don't understand is why isn't there prior note and warning for at least two weeks!

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Hey Mahmoud :)
Yeah bro, that's what I was writing for the community
I didn't have enough time to take a backup from my projects
That was so incredible
Need to have our own server to host projects
Anyway tnx for leaving a comment bro
Keep it up
Happy Coding Mahmoud(My Muslim brother)

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manishfoodtechs profile image
manish srivastava

This is why you need to get your own server and put gitlab on it.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Gonna do it
But it's a little bit late :(
I even didn't have enough time to take a backup from my fuc*ing projects :(
Damn Gosh
Keep it up
Happy Coding Manish :)

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manishfoodtechs profile image
manish srivastava

I will suggest you VPN to get backup

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banji220 profile image
Banji

I'm gonna do it, it's really hard even to download VPN
Cause All of the servers are blocked from Iran😂😂 But it's possible
ProtonVPN is not working anymore
Tor servers are blocked from Iran
Damn this condition

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manishfoodtechs profile image
manish srivastava

Then I will suggest tailos. Generally, I never suggest this os until it's really emergency to safeguard democracy. You can download it and use pendrive to reach your destination.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Oh, I've never heard about it
Gonna check it out
Thank you so much Manish Srivastava for sharing your amazing information with the community
Good luck👨‍💻

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fultonbrowne profile image
Fulton Browne • Edited

I would take a look at a service like sr.ht and/or use a VPN and tor privacy.net/use-vpn-with-tor/ . That really sucks I wish my government could stop posing these useless sanctions and restrictions that give literally no benefit to anyone.

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Hey Fulton
Thank you for sharing your information with the community :)
sr.ht sounds like good, gonna give it a shot
and just let you know that GitLab didn't give me access when I tried to log-in with the Tor browser :O
And that website is really useful(Tor over VPN or VPN over Tor, but the problem would be the Speed!)
Tnx Fulton
Keep it up
Happy Coding :)

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cipharius profile image
Valts Liepiņš

It doesn't seem to be country-wide ban, since one can open gitlab with Iran based proxy: vitaming.ir/go.php?https://gitlab....

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banji220 profile image
Banji

Tnx :(