Tor has a new HTTPS-like feature to help beat censorship
The Tor Project has released a new bridge called WebTunnel, aimed at those trying to access the Internet in regions with heavy censorship.
In his blog postsays the organization, “the development of different types of bridges is crucial to making Tor more resilient to censorship and staying ahead of adversaries in the highly dynamic and ever-changing censorship landscape.”
The announcement comes at a crucial time as many elections will take place around the world this year, meaning many countries will look to restrict access to the public internet in an attempt to silence any dissenting voices.
WebTunnel
The Tor Project describes WebTunnel as a “censorship-resistant, pluggable transport designed to emulate encrypted web traffic (HTTPS).” This means that it will appear to observers as a regular HTTPS connection, making it appear as if the user in question is just browsing in a normal manner.
The similarities are so strong that Tor claims that “WebTunnel… can co-exist with a website on the same network endpoint, i.e., same domain, IP address, and same port.”
It also says that, unlike obfs4 bridges, WebTunnel’s ability to mimic regular web traffic means it is “more effective in scenarios where there is a list of protocols allowed and a network environment that is denied by default.”
Tor likens network censorship methods to a coin sorting machine, with the coins themselves representing the flow of internet traffic. The machine checks whether the coins are the right shape to fit through the slot and lets them through if so. With fully encrypted web traffic, the coins do not fit and are blocked.
Tor explains that since obfs4 traffic does not have a recognizable form for the censorship authorities, it is blocked. But because WebTunnel traffic looks like HTTPS traffic, it is passed over.
WebTunnel Bridges can be found on the Tor Bridges website, under the Advanced Options section. They require the latest versions of the Tor Browser to work, which are available for desktop and Android devices.