Hello,
Another update:
As it's very hard to get a vantage point in the country[1], we've asked feedback from users to understand what works there. But, if by any chance you have access to a machine hosted there, do let me know! You can contact me in private. :)
Based on user feedback, we learned that obfs4 bridges running on residential connections + port 80, 443 or 8080 works in Turkmenistan. Last week I asked some operators to change their bridge obfs4 port and it worked!
Unfortunately, users reported that censors blocked some bridges. You can even see that on Tor Metrics graph. For example: - https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/D1302AC19A71BED956C568AC79DF0... - https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/A811AAB7771434CE0DD4D3942173E...
If you're operating these bridges and can easily rotate the IP address, please do!
Finally, if you want to learn more about censorship in Turkmenistan, you can check this great presentation[2] from last year.
Thanks for running bridges! Gus
[1] https://ntc.party/t/vps/2804/9 [2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1odIO1Bi9laU-B-JZMoZFWGEwkTl95oq9/view
On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 01:00:17PM -0300, gus wrote:
Hello, just a quick update:
Some friends from Turkmenistan told me that they don't think this new round of online censorship is related to the upcoming elections, because it's just a "formal" event. In general, they said, shutdowns and internet disruptions are motivated by other events like:
- when Russian Duma speaker arrived in TM
- the wedding day of the president's grandson
Anyway, today we tested some of bridges that you shared with us and I replied back saying which ones worked and which ones didn't.
Thank you for running a bridge!, Gus
On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 04:25:05PM -0300, gus wrote:
Dear Relay operators community,
The parliamentary elections in Turkmenistan are coming up very soon on March 26th[1], and the Turkmen government has tightened internet censorship and restrictions even more. In the last few months, the Anti-censorship community has learned that different pluggable transports, like Snowflake, and entire IP ranges, have been blocked in the country. Therefore, running a bridge on popular hosting providers like Hetzner, Digital Ocean, Linode, and AWS won't help as these providers' IP ranges are completely blocked in Turkmenistan.
Recently, we learned from the Anti-censorship community[2] and via Tor user support channels that Tor bridges running on residential connections were working fine. Although they were blocked after some days or a week, these bridges received a lot of users and were very important to keep Turkmens connected.
How to help Turkmens to access the Internet
You can help Turkmens to access the free and open internet by running an obfs4 Tor bridge! But here's the trick: you need to run it on a residential connection -- you won't need a static IPv4 --, and it would ideally be run on more robust hardware than just a Raspberry Pi (although that can help, we have found they can get overloaded).
You can set up an obfs4 bridge by following our official guide: https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/
After you setup a new bridge, you can share your bridge line with the Tor support team at frontdesk@torproject.org, and we will share it with users.
A complete bridge line is composed of:
IP:OBFS4_PORT FINGERPRINT cert=obfs4-certificate iat-mode=0Check this documentation to learn how to share your bridge line: https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/post-install/
Just sharing your bridge fingerprint is not the best, but it's fine.
You can read more about censorship against Tor in Turkmenistan here:
- https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issu...
- Snowflake blocked: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issu...
Thank you for your support in helping to keep the internet free and open for everyone.
Gus
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkmen_parliamentary_election [2] https://ntc.party/c/internet-censorship-all-around-the-world/turkmenistan/17 https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/80
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