Tor’s new WebTunnel bridges mimic HTTPS traffic to evade censorship

The Tor Project officially introduced WebTunnel, a new bridge type specifically designed to help bypass censorship targeting the Tor network by hiding connections in plain sight.

It makes it harder to block Tor connections by ensuring that the traffic blends in with HTTPS-encrypted web traffic.

Since blocking HTTPS would also block the vast majority of connections to web servers, the WebTunnel connections will also be permitted, effectively circumventing censorship in network environments with protocol allow lists and deny-by-default policies.

This is pretty good, as often censorship blocks are done by destination address or protocol type.

To be able to use a WebTunnel bridge, you’ll first have to get bridge addresses and add them manually to Tor Browser for desktop through the given procedure. So some preparation is required.

While WebTunnel works in regions like China and Russia, it does not currently work in some regions in Iran,” the Tor Project said.

It will also work with the Tor Android client.

See https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/tors-new-webtunnel-bridges-mimic-https-traffic-to-evade-censorship/
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