International Tor Blocked in Russia

[phoenixikki]

The Tor browser, which allows users to surf the internet anonymously and access prohibited webpages, has been blocked across much of Russia, according to recent reports from an internet-monitoring group.
The Open Observatory of Network Interference, or OONI, reported last week that Tor’s system of proxy servers in Russia had partly stopped working at around 5:21pm Moscow time on December 2.

While Russian authorities had not yet commented officially on the block, on Monday, politician Anton Gorelkin addressed the matter on Telegram, writing, “I have never been a supporter of blocks, but in Tor’s case I simply don’t see an alternative.” Tor was used primarily for illegal activity, he claimed, and he concluded, “Tor, for me (and, I think, for all well-thinking people), is an absolute evil, which we must fight as firmly and with as little compromise as possible.”

The Tor Project, an organization that maintains software for the network that powers the browser, has reportedly previously received a warning from Russia’s online watchdog, Roskomnadzor. According to the developers, they were told that the caution related to the hosting of prohibited content.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Roskomnadzor confirmed that access to Tor had been restricted. The Tor Project have also since issued a statement saying that their homepage has been blocked within Russia.

One Twitter user, ValdikSS, assessed the extent of the block that had reportedly been in place since before December 3, concluding that Moscow seemed to be the most affected region of the country, and that most large internet providers in Russia had complied with the block.

Tor, which stands for The Onion Router, is a free, open-source software that enables anonymous internet communication. It makes the user’s activity difficult to trace, as well as providing access to websites that have been blocked. This has made it a popular method of protecting internet privacy and bypassing censorship, but the software has been criticized for enabling illegal activity online, such as drug dealing.

Source

 

[Bourbaki]

FYI, the official (and boring) response by the Tor Project:
https://blog.torproject.org/tor-censorship-in-russia

Update: Right after we published this article, the Russian government has officially blocked our main website in Russia. Users can circumvent this block by visiting our website mirror.

Since December 1st, some Internet providers in Russia have started to block access to Tor. Today, we've learned that the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), a Russian government bureaucratic entity, is threatening to censor our main website (torproject.org). Russia is the country with the second largest number of Tor users, with more than 300,000 daily users or 15% of all Tor users. As it seems this situation could quickly escalate to a country-wide Tor block, it's urgent that we respond to this censorship! We need your help NOW to keep Russians connected to Tor!
Run a Tor bridge

Last month we launched the campaign Help Censored Users, Run a Tor Bridge to motivate more volunteers to spin up more bridges. The campaign has been a great success, and we've already achieved our goal of 200 new obfs4 bridges. Today, we have more than 400 new bridges.

But now, if the censorship pattern that we're analyzing in some Russian internet providers is to be deployed country-wide, we will need many more bridges to keep Russians online. Thanks to researchers, we've learned that the default bridges available in Tor Browser aren't working in some places in Russia - this includes Snowflake bridges and obfs4 bridges obtained dynamically using Moat. Russian users need to follow our guide to use bridges that are not blocked.

We are calling on everyone to spin up a Tor bridge! If you've ever considered running a bridge, now is an excellent time to get started, as your help is urgently needed. You can find the requirements and instructions for starting a bridge in the Help Censored Users, Run a Tor Bridge blog post.
We need the support of the Internet Freedom community
Teach users about Tor bridges

Digital security trainers and internet freedom advocates, your help is needed! As this instance of censorship limits direct access to our website, malicious actors could start phishing users with fake Tor Browsers or spreading disinformation about Tor. Teaching users how to bypass censorship and how to get the official Tor Browser version using GetTor or a mirror will be crucial. We need you help spread accurate information about Tor and Tor bridges, particularly among Russian audiences.
Localize Tor

We have an extremely helpful and responsive Russian translator community, but we urgently need more volunteers. Learn how to become a Tor translator and join Tor's localization IRC channel or use Element to connect to (#tor-l10n:matrix.org).
Document internet censorship

Russian users can help us see how the Russian government is censoring the internet by running the OONI probe app on their mobile or desktop devices. OONI, the Open Observatory of Network Interference, will test if and how Tor is being blocked by your internet provider. After installing, please run the "Circumvention test", which will check if circumvention tools like Tor are blocked. Internet measurements are important for detection of anomalous activities; a volunteer running the OONI probe and discussing results with the Tor community was how we discovered the current censorship in Russia.
Apply pressure

International digital rights and human rights organizations must pressure Russia's government to immediately revert this censorship.

We will update this post if the situation changes. To receive a notification for updates, you can subscribe to our new Forum and click on the bell icon.

 

[Renard]

Do people even use Tor anymore? I haven't heard about it since the 2010s.

 

[tramendous]

Ive seen people on youtube go on it. Its a cesspool.

 

[The Audience]

Do people even use Tor anymore? I haven't heard about it since the 2010s.

Pretty sure the FBI still uses it

 

[idrankyourbeer]

Do people even use Tor anymore? I haven't heard about it since the 2010s.

i used it for a bit just to get around geolocation restrictions for certain websites. but it was always too slow for me to even watch youtube videos

ive since been using a vpn and its cleared things up

 

[Phlog]

Tor was an American navy project originally wasn't it? Makes sense given the upcoming Ukraine argee bhajee.

 

[idrankyourbeer]

But now, if the censorship pattern that we're analyzing in some Russian internet providers is to be deployed country-wide, we will need many more bridges to keep Russians online.

i know russia is known for hacking and shady internet practices and whatnot, but why do they all need to use Tor just to browse the internet?

are they all selling black market krokodil over there or what? do they not have windows and some kind of normal web browser? or are they afraid that putin will come and arrest them and send them all to camps if they watch some cat video on youtube that the russian government does not find adorable?

genuinely curious here. something tells me that theres alot of pesky russians up to no good. now how are they supposed to run their troll farms anonymously?

 

[Fox by the Sea]

you can find 100 glowies for every non glowie on the dark web right now
it's literally fbi buying cocaine from the nsa these days.
"hello fellow dark net traveler "

 

[Ophydian]

I guess the Russian government is upset that legitimate criminals and the government were getting serious competition from upstarts and local people.

 

[Scheme]

Tor is essentially what most people assumed the regular internet was when they first started using it. We've been conditioned to think the government and corporations spying on us is normal.

 

[rearnakedchoke]

Never heard of it. Seems like something criminals would use.

 

[Tentacle Grape]

The Tor browser, which allows users to surf the internet anonymously and access prohibited webpages, has been blocked across much of Russia, according to recent reports from an internet-monitoring group.
The Open Observatory of Network Interference, or OONI, reported last week that Tor’s system of proxy servers in Russia had partly stopped working at around 5:21pm Moscow time on December 2.

While Russian authorities had not yet commented officially on the block, on Monday, politician Anton Gorelkin addressed the matter on Telegram, writing, “I have never been a supporter of blocks, but in Tor’s case I simply don’t see an alternative.” Tor was used primarily for illegal activity, he claimed, and he concluded, “Tor, for me (and, I think, for all well-thinking people), is an absolute evil, which we must fight as firmly and with as little compromise as possible.”

The Tor Project, an organization that maintains software for the network that powers the browser, has reportedly previously received a warning from Russia’s online watchdog, Roskomnadzor. According to the developers, they were told that the caution related to the hosting of prohibited content.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Roskomnadzor confirmed that access to Tor had been restricted. The Tor Project have also since issued a statement saying that their homepage has been blocked within Russia.

One Twitter user, ValdikSS, assessed the extent of the block that had reportedly been in place since before December 3, concluding that Moscow seemed to be the most affected region of the country, and that most large internet providers in Russia had complied with the block.

Tor, which stands for The Onion Router, is a free, open-source software that enables anonymous internet communication. It makes the user’s activity difficult to trace, as well as providing access to websites that have been blocked. This has made it a popular method of protecting internet privacy and bypassing censorship, but the software has been criticized for enabling illegal activity online, such as drug dealing.

Source

now the russians will have to go to Twitter for their anime and child pron

 

[TUFNewb]

i know russia is known for hacking and shady internet practices and whatnot, but why do they all need to use Tor just to browse the internet?

are they all selling black market krokodil over there or what? do they not have windows and some kind of normal web browser? or are they afraid that putin will come and arrest them and send them all to camps if they watch some cat video on youtube that the russian government does not find adorable?

genuinely curious here. something tells me that theres alot of pesky russians up to no good. now how are they supposed to run their troll farms anonymously?

FSB wants to keep a close eye on dissidents, just wants to control the flow of information in general. In Russia they have internet blacklists, takedown laws, data sovereignty laws, laws that force telecommunication companies to spy for them... Tor is a way around all that. The fact they block it is proof it protects Russians from the surveillance state.

Russian criminals can still access Tor. Power users can still do it too. Just access with a bridge that is not blocked. A cybercriminal could just easily just setup their own private obsfucated bridge on a server outside Russia if they really needed to. This move is to try and keep the less knowledgeable masses from adopting it.

 

[Dalarna3]

Tor was partly funded by the American government, so its no surprise that Russia is going to block it.

 

[Long Dark Blues]

Are Russians using it without a secure OS?!

 

[Xuh]

Tor is essentially what most people assumed the regular internet was when they first started using it. We've been conditioned to think the government and corporations spying on us is normal.

Teh irony is that TOR literally was created by US government spies.
I'm fairly sure as well that governments, corporations, and whoever else has the means (eg religious inquisitors 100s of yrs ago) spying on people has in fact been normal throughout history.
And I imagine even in caveman times the tribal elders might have asked someone to snoop on Grug when he thought no-one was looking to see if he was summoning Bad JuJu upon the tribe and needed a rock to the back of the head.

Part of why US Govt funded TOR in the first place was to provide a platform for the pet dissidents it likes to nurture in freedumb-hatin' countries to continue to coordinate away from the reach of local authorities. So you can imagine why Russia would want to turn it off.
Trying to block TOR seems kinda low dick energy though, and a bit pointless. Blocking, say, Twitter™ and denouncing it as an enemy propaganda platform, would be much bigger dick move.
And as we all know, bigger is better.

 

[MoparOrNoCar]

I just hired a hitman on TOR and had a bag of dope sent to my house that I bought using bitcoin.

TOR is alive and well folks.

 

[Rational Poster]

1984 something something

 

[idrankyourbeer]

FSB wants to keep a close eye on dissidents, just wants to control the flow of information in general. In Russia they have internet blacklists, takedown laws, data sovereignty laws, laws that force telecommunication companies to spy for them... Tor is a way around all that. The fact they block it is proof it protects Russians from the surveillance state.

Russian criminals can still access Tor. Power users can still do it too. Just access with a bridge that is not blocked. A cybercriminal could just easily just setup their own private obsfucated bridge on a server outside Russia if they really needed to. This move is to try and keep the less knowledgeable masses from adopting it.

yeah i guess its a diifferent world out there. i dont think people would be sending out too many lets go brandons against putin on the internet without using tor or whatever. the KGB would probably come and rough them up a little and then take all of their electronics

why dont they just use VPN's though? or are they all blocked too?