[tor-relays] A call to arms for obfuscated bridges

[Sina Eetezadi]

I would love to help. My questions, does it make any sense to run a
bridge from a residential internet that changes its IP 2-3 times a day?
My server is running constantly, however my provider "likes" disconnects
and as a result my IP changes.


> Greetings,
> 
> A year ago we asked you to run obfuscated bridges to help people in
> Iran [0]. Many people answered our call and we ended up having a big
> pool of obfuscated bridges to give to our users.
> 
> Unfortunately, today, most of those bridges are down, and fresh ones
> are needed more than ever, since obfuscated bridges are the only way
> for people to access Tor in some areas of the world (like China, Iran
> and Syria).
> 
> On the bright side, Tor's anti-censorship infrastructure has improved,
> and now you don't have to send the bridge addresses to us; if you run
> an obfuscated bridge with Tor 0.2.4.x, Tor will send its own address
> to BridgeDB [1] like normal bridges do.
> 
> Also, obfsproxy was rewritten in Python and it now supports a new
> pluggable transport called 'obfs3' which works even in China [2]. We
> have dropped support for the C-version of Obfsproxy, and the new
> Pluggable Transport Bundles contain the Python version [3]. Finally,
> future pluggable transports will be developed for the Python version.
> 
> Looking into BridgeDB, we have 200 obfs2 bridges, but only 40 obfs3
> bridges: this means that we need more people running the new Python
> obfsproxy! Upgrading obfsproxy should be easy now, since we prepared
> new instructions and Debian/Ubuntu packages. If you run Debian or
> Ubuntu check out these instructiosn:
> https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-debian-instructions.html.en
> otherwise use these:
> https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-instructions.html.en
> (and make sure your pip is upgraded so that it uses HTTPS [4])
> 
> Furthermore, Tor's support assistants need some _unpublished_ bridges to
> give to censored users who ask for help via email. To configure an
> unpublished bridge you add
> "PublishServerDescriptor 0"
> to its torrc. After you do so, fire up Tor, and check its logs to find
> the ports that 'obfs2' and 'obfs3' are using. Send your IP and ports
> to tor-assistants at torproject.org. 
> 
> Finally, if in the future we need you to do something extra (for example to
> upgrade obfsproxy to support a new pluggable transport) we will send
> another mail to tor-relays.
> 
> Thanks for the help!
> 
> [0]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2012-February/023070.html
> [1]: https://bridges.torproject.org
> [2]: In China obfs2 is blocked using active probes: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8591
> [3]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/new-name-obfsproxy-tor-browser-bundles
> [4]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/python-virtualenv/foXxh-NpdGg/uT0NPc9mFQ8J
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