[tor-talk] massive automated bridge requests: why?

[Paolo Palmieri]

> Over the past few months the number of bridge users has spiked, most
> prominently in Italy, but also plenty in Spain, Brazil, Israel, and
> others.
> 
> It seems clear that somebody's unofficial Tor bundle automatically grabs
> some bridges for its users, and that this somebody didn't understand
> the notion of being polite to a remote service -- I think each user is
> hitting the bridges page roughly every 30 seconds.
> 
> But the question first is: what's going on? Can those of you near or in
> these countries please ask around and try to get some answers?

In Italy, a law (well, not exactly, a decree by the telecommunication
authority, AGCOM) about an IP blacklist for file sharing websites is
being discussed. A final decision was supposed to be made in July, but
was finally delayed, probably till next November. Some links in English
that discuss it:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3jw6ju4
http://preview.tinyurl.com/44tocuc

Because of this, many links and short guides to Tor are being posted
around, mostly by inexperienced users that do not warn about the
potential security problems, and are in generally quite misleading as to
what Tor actually is and how it works. In this context, the idea that an
unofficial, and apparently badly built Tor bundle might be out there
only makes sense.

Paolo