Tor is a network designed to ensure online privacy and anonymity. His name, an acronym for “The Onion Router” (The Onion Router), refers to the layered structure of its architecture, which involves the application of multiple cryptographic layers. In another article we have how Tor Browser works, one of the applications built on top of the Tor network that allow you to surf the web anonymously.
A solution like Tor Browser is used by users concerned about the privacyby activists and journalists, by individuals in countries that apply forms of censorship, by all those who wish to move around the Web without leaving traces. The right to anonymity on the Internet, on the other hand, has already been sanctioned since 2015 by the Europen Parliament which approved the Declaration of Internet Rights.
Since the use of Tor makes it impossible, if not extremely complex (under very specific conditions), the identification of theuser identitymany countries try to block Tor on a daily basis, preventing the various telecommunications operators from managing the data transiting the network.
WebTunnel: Tor prevents censorship attempts using the HTTPS protocol
On the occasion of the “World Day against Online Censorship“, the development team of the Tor project has officially announced the release of WebTunnela new bridge which allows users to browse anonymously, overcoming all attempts to inhibit the use of the service.
The solution adopted is simple but at the same time very effective: i Tor data packets they are “wrapped” in an HTTPS connection. This means all systems that perform network traffic analysis they are no longer able to detect, report and possibly block information passing through the Tor network. Packages transferred, for example, with Tor BrowserIn fact, they “get lost” among all the other packets transferred via HTTPS by users who normally browse the Web.
What is WebTunnel and how does it work
WebTunnel is a censorship-resistant transport mechanism designed to “mimic” the encrypted web traffic (HTTPS) and inspired by the HTTPT project.
Already integrated into the stable version of Tor Browser, it can now be used as an alternative to obfs4. While the latter and other types of fully encrypted traffic still aim to be undetectable, WebTunnel’s approach of “modeling” the most popular way of exchanging data on the Web, via HTTPS, makes this protocol much more effective in those scenarios where there is a list of allowed protocols and a system is used that blocks all other data traffic by default.
In these configurations, for example, obfs4 traffic is automatically blocked because it does not correspond to any allowed protocol. On the contrary, the traffic generated by WebTunnel, precisely because it is effectively identical to HTTPS data exchanges, will pass censorship.
How to set up the use of WebTunnel in Tor Browser
To enable the use of WebTunnel with the latest version of Tor Browser, simply type about:preferences#connection in the address bar and then click the button Add a bridge by hand in the section Bridge.
Inside the box Type address:doorit is necessary to paste the addresses obtainable by going to the page Get Bridges, after solving the proposed CAPTCHA. Connecting to the page showing usable bridges can be done with a regular web browser.
The same type of intervention can also be carried out on Android specifying that you want to provide an already known bridge and indicating those obtained through the official Tor website in the previous step.