Tor Project Developers announced about the launch of a new feature – WebTunnel bridges, which operate on a detection-resistant HTTPT proxy and allow Tor traffic to better mix with regular HTTPS traffic.
As a reminder, Tor bridges are relays not listed in the Tor public directory that allow user connections to be masked. Since methods for detecting and blocking such connections have been found for quite some time (for example, in China), Tor also uses obfsproxy bridges, which add an additional layer of obfuscation.
According to the developers, WebTunnel bridges are designed to simulate encrypted traffic (HTTPS) and are based on HTTPT. They wrap the connection payload in a WebSocket-like HTTPS connection that looks like a regular HTTPS (WebSocket). That is, to an outside observer, it is a regular HTTP connection in which the user is simply browsing the web.
“In fact, WebTunnel is so similar to regular web traffic that it can coexist on the same endpoint as a website, meaning it shares the same domain, IP address and port. This coexistence allows a standard reverse proxy to route both regular web traffic and the WebTunnel to the appropriate application servers. As a result, when someone tries to visit a site using a shared network address, they will simply see the contents of that site address and will not detect the existence of a bridge (WebTunnel),” says the Tor Project.
It is noted that testing of WebTunnel began in the summer of 2023. There are currently approximately 60 WebTunnel bridges operating worldwide, and approximately 700 active users daily using the new bridges across multiple platforms. However, WebTunnel does not currently work in all regions, and bridge addresses must be obtained manually, which they plan to improve in the future.