Show HN: Mtproto.zig – High-performance Telegram proxy with DPI evasion

[slp3r]

Hey everyone. I built an MTProto proxy for Telegram aimed at bypassing active DPI censorship like the Russian TSPU. I chose Zig because it's perfect for writing fast network daemons and makes it incredibly easy to port low-level C bypass techniques like TCP desync and packet fragmentation. Would love to get some feedback or contributors!

[txrx0000]

Cool project. But why tunnel Telegram specifically? This could be a yet another VPN protocol.

There are some useful ideas from SoftEtherVPN, BitTorrent, Yggdrasil Network, and Tor you could borrow, if you're looking to improve this. The ideal tunneling solution, which doesn't exist yet, is one that not only evades DPI, but also onion bounces you through nodes in a decentralized ad hoc network, and does automatic node discovery.

[pixel_popping]

Nowadays I prefer to have dedicated application solutions, everybody (with security in mind) has some sort of base WG/Tailscale setup, it's annoying to tweak to incorporate those on top, so per-program solution imo makes sense and especially in the AI era where you don't really want to allow agents to tamper with your main network card config, it's safer and cleaner.

Thanks OP for this!

[txrx0000]

What I meant was that you could combine ideas from those 4 projects to build a new VPN protocol, not that you need to tweak your existing tunneling setup to allow those applications through.

[kraftaa]

Interesting approach, I saw a discussion recently about how mimicking real traffic tends to work better than randomizing it, since randomness becomes its own fingerprint.

Does this still blend in well with normal HTTPS traffic?

[echovoiceapp]

Interesting project! As someone building a voice-to-text keyboard (Echo), I appreciate the craftsmanship here. The attention to detail in developer tools makes a big difference for the end user experience.

[wheresmyshadow]

that looks very interesting, indeed. do you think it could work in places like iran too during current internet shutdown? some people use things like dnstt to get connected but it's extremely slow and unstable.

thanks for your work

[slp3r]

If they are implementing a complete blackout - dropping international routing and switching to a default-deny intranet - this proxy won't help, sadly

[hagbard_c]

It could if connectivity to Telegram were brought in through e.g. Starlink. Users would connect to the proxy (an Iranian address) which forwards the requests to the outside world.

[ai_slop_hater]

Have you built it, or have you had AI build it?

[_lvbh]

Very obvious with the GEMINI.md.

I wish there was a rule to ban AI submissions. Not because I think there's 0 value, but because there's just such a high volume and low signal to noise ratio

[buremba]

does it matter?

[000ooo000]

Yeah it does. If you're happy routing your personal data through software that lacks an author who fully understands what the software does, good for you. Suggesting that this doesn't matter in general is.. not an opinion I'd share publicly.

[buremba]

You can ask your agent to verify or review code. Just because people wrote code by hand, it doesn't mean you should trust

[subscribed]

Immensely, and in saying it as someone both writing stuff by hand and using AI as a helper.

At the very least any primarily AI submission should be tagged. If untagged - should be removed.

[Asuka-wx]

As a solo founder myself, I can relate. The hardest part is making decisions alone.