The developers of the anonymization service Tor (The Onion Router) have introduced a new type of Tor bridges, so-called web tunnels. This should allow users to connect to the Tor network from networks affected by strong censorship measures and from there to anywhere in the world.
Advertisement
Web tunnels are designed to circumvent censorship measures by imitating encrypted web traffic (HTTPS). In the web tunnel announcement, the Tor developers write that the payload connection will be packaged in websocket-like HTTPS connections. To outsiders, this looks exactly like an HTTPS or Websocket connection. Anyone who examines the traffic will see users surfing the web as normal.
Web tunnel: Endpoint on web server
In fact, web tunnels are so similar to web traffic that they can coexist with a regular website on the same endpoint. This means the same domain, IP address and network port. This coexistence allows a standard reverse proxy to route traditional web traffic and web tunnels to your application servers. This means that someone who visits the website on the shared network address simply receives the content of the website and does not notice that there is a secret bridge in the form of the web tunnel.
Currently, web tunnel bridges are distributed via a dedicated Tor website. The developers plan to include additional distribution channels such as Telegram or moat. To use web tunnels, those interested should visit the Tor Project's Bridges website. The “Advanced Options” offer the option to output “Web Tunnel” in the drop-down box. After clicking on the “Get Brdiges” button, you have to solve a captcha, whereupon the website displays a line with a web tunnel. This must be copied.
Now the new version of the Tor browser must be downloaded and installed. The “Configure connection…” button leads to the settings. The previously copied web tunnel line must be inserted by clicking on “Add bridge manually…” and the dialog must be closed. After clicking on “Connect”, the Tor browser will now connect to the Tor network via the web tunnel. The project is currently looking to collect feedback on the feature to refine it.
The Tor developers write that there are currently 60 web tunnel bridges and 700 active users of them every day. More bridges are desirable – instructions from the Tor project explain how they should be set up. However, web tunnels are not a panacea: While they work in China and Russia, for example, they cannot be used in some regions of Iran.
At the beginning of February, the Tor project announced that the components of the Tor ecosystem had undergone a security audit. Some security issues that were classified as low risk and one as high risk came to light.
(dmk)