Tor WebTunnel: Mimics HTTPS traffic to avoid censorship

The Tor Project has officially introduced WebTunnel, a new type of bridge designed specifically to help bypass censorship targeting the Tor network by hiding connections from prying eyes.

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Tor bridges are relays that are not listed in the public Tor directory and keep users' connections to the network hidden from repressive regimes. Although some countries, such as China and Iran , have found ways to detect and block such connections, Tor also provides obfsproxy bridges , which add an extra layer of concealment to counter censorship efforts.

Tor WebTunnel offers censorship-protected data transfer inspired by HTTPS. WebTunnel makes it more difficult to exclusivity Tor connections by ensuring that traffic is integrated with HTTPS-encrypted web traffic.

Since blocking HTTPS will also block the vast majority of connections to web servers, WebTunnel connections will also be allowed, effectively bypassing the blocking in the network environment with protocol lists and deny policies by default.

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To use a Tor WebTunnel, you must first obtain the bridge addresses from here and manually add them to the Tor desktop using the following procedure:

1. Open the Tor browser and go to the connection preferences window (or click on “Connection Settings”).
2. Click on “Add bridge manually” and add the bridge addresses.
3. Close the bridge window and click “Connect.”
4. Please note any problems or unexpected behavior while using WebTunnel.

You can also use WebTunnel with the Tor browser for Androidby setting up a new bridge and entering the bridge addresses after clicking “Provide a Bridge I know“.

See also: Tor Project: Removes relays due to dangerous activities

HTTPS, which stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure, is a protocol that provides secure communication on the Internet by encrypting the data exchanged between the user and the server. HTTPS uses the SSL/TLS to encrypt the data. This means that even if someone manages to 'listen' to the communication, they will not be able to understand what the data is saying because of the encryption. In addition, HTTPS verifies the identity of web pages. Finally, HTTPS protects against 'man-in-the-middle' attacks, where attackers try to insert themselves into the communication between the user and the server. With SSL/TLS encryption, this becomes very difficult.

Source: bleepingcomputer