Roskomnadzor has officially amended the unified registry of banned websites, blocking access to www.torproject.org. All IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of the project's main website have been added to the registry, but additional websites not associated with Tor Browser distribution, such as blog.torproject.org, forum.torproject.net, and gitlab.torproject.org, remain accessible. The blocking also does not affect official mirrors such as tor.eff.org, gettor.torproject.org, and tb-manual.torproject.org. Platform version Android continues to be distributed through the Google Play catalog.
The blocking was carried out on the basis of an old decision of the Saratov District Court, adopted back in 2017. The Saratov District Court declared illegal the distribution of the Tor Browser browser-anonymizer on the website www.torproject.org, since with its help users can access sites that contain information included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials Prohibited for Distribution in the Russian Federation .
Thus, by decision of the court, the information contained on the website www.torproject.org is recognized as prohibited for distribution on the territory of the Russian Federation. This decision was included in the register of banned sites in 2017, but for the last four years the entry has been marked as not subject to blocking. Today the status has been changed to "access restricted".
It is noteworthy that the changes to activate the block were made a few hours after the publication of a warning about the blocking situation in Russia on the Tor Project website, which mentioned that the situation could quickly develop into a full-blown Tor block in the Russian Federation and described possible ways to bypass the blocking. Russia is in second place in terms of the number of Tor users (about 300 thousand users, which is approximately 14% of all Tor users), second only to the United States (20.98%).
In case of blocking of the network itself, and not just the site, users are advised to use bridge nodes. You can get the address of a hidden bridge node on the bridges.torproject.org website by sending a message to the Telegram bot @GetBridgesBot or by sending an email via Riseup or Gmail to bridges@torproject.org with an empty subject and the text "get transport obfs4". In order to help bypass blocking in the Russian Federation, enthusiasts are invited to take part in the creation of new bridge nodes. There are currently about 1600 such nodes (1000 can be used with obfs4 transport), of which 400 were added in the last month.
Additionally, we can note the release of a specialized distribution Tails 4.25 (The Amnesic Incognito Live System), based on the package base Debian Designed to provide anonymous online access, Tails uses the Tor system for anonymous access. All connections except those through the Tor network are blocked by default by a packet filter. Encryption is used to store user data in persistent mode between launches. A 1.1 GB ISO image, capable of running in Live mode, is available for download.
In the new version:
- Updated versions of Tor Browser 11.0.2 (no official release yet) and Tor 0.4.6.8.
- The package includes a utility with an interface for creating and updating backups of persistent storage that contains user data that changes. The backups are saved to another USB stick with Tails, which can be considered as a clone of the current drive.
- A new item "Tails (External Hard Disk)" has been added to the GRUB boot menu, allowing you to run Tails from an external hard drive or one of several USB drives. The mode can be used when the regular boot process ends with an error about the inability to find the live system image.
- Added a shortcut to restart Tails in case Unsafe Browser is not enabled in the Welcome Screen application.
- Added links to documentation for troubleshooting common problems in Tor connection error messages.
Also worth mentioning is the Whonix 16.0.3.7 patch release, which aims to provide guaranteed anonymity, security, and privacy protection. The distribution is based on Debian GNU/Linux and uses Tor to ensure anonymity. A unique feature of Whonix is its division into two separately installed components: Whonix-Gateway, which implements a network gateway for anonymous communications, and Whonix-Workstation, which features the Xfce desktop. Both components are delivered within a single bootable image for virtualization systems. Network access from the Whonix-Workstation environment is only possible through the Whonix-Gateway, which isolates the work environment from direct interaction with the outside world and allows only the use of fictitious network addresses.
This approach allows to protect the user from real data leakage. IP addresses In the event of a web browser hack, or even by exploiting a vulnerability that gives an attacker root access to the system, hacking Whonix-Workstation would only allow an attacker to obtain fictitious network parameters, as the real IP and DNS settings are hidden behind a network gateway that routes traffic exclusively through Tor. The new version updates Tor 0.4.6.8 and Tor Browser 11.0.1, and the Whonix-Workstation firewall now includes an optional setting for filtering outgoing IP addresses using the outgoing_allow_ip_list whitelist.
Source: opennet.ru
