[tor-relays] Verizon AS701 blocking Tor consensus server tor26 (86.59.21.38)

[Nathaniel Suchy (Lunorian)]

Can you still use Tor on Verizon with bridges?

Sent from my iPhone

> On May 16, 2018, at 11:05 AM, Roger Dingledine <arma at mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 08:12:50PM -0400, Neel Chauhan wrote:
>> Hi tor-relays mailing list,
>> 
>> I have noticed that the Tor consensus server tor26 (https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/847B1F850344D7876491A54892F904934E4EB85D)
>> is blocked on Verizon's UUNET (AS701) backbone, and therefore, Verizon's
>> retail services like FiOS and Wireless.
> 
> I've been assuming the reason is something like wannacry: the wannacry
> malware shipped with a Tor client, which means if you watch its behavior,
> one of its early steps is to bootstrap into the Tor network. So my
> bet is that some Verizon analysis person watched it bootstrap, and saw
> the connection to tor26, and decided to blacklist tor26 network-wide in
> order to protect their customers from wannacry... and then of course they
> moved on to something else and they never realized (still don't realize)
> that their block rule had anything to do with Tor.
> 
> This reminds me of the Australian dentist website story, where the
> dentist website ended up on the nationwide censorship list, presumably
> because the website was compromised and serving malware at the time
> they made the list -- but then once they'd cleaned up the website, it
> turned out there was no mechanism for being removed from the blocklist,
> because nobody had ever thought of that side of the issue.
> 
> The fix (if my theory is right) would be to reach whatever engineer made
> this leap, and teach them about Tor. But it will be extra challenging
> because they don't even know that there's something they need to learn.
> 
> --Roger
> 
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