Today, March 12th, on the [1]World Day Against Cyber Censorship, the
  Tor Project's Anti-Censorship Team is excited to officially announce
  the release of WebTunnel, a new type of Tor bridge designed to assist
  users in heavily censored regions to connect to the Tor network.
  Available now in the stable version of Tor Browser, WebTunnel joined
  our collection of censorship circumvention tech developed and
  maintained by The Tor Project.

  The development of different types of bridges are crucial for making
  Tor more resilient against censorship and stay ahead of adversaries in
  the highly dynamic and ever-changing censorship landscape. This is
  especially true as we're going through the 2024 global election
  megacycle, [2]the role of censorship circumvention tech becomes crucial
  in defending Internet Freedom.

  If you've ever considered becoming a Tor bridge operator to help others
  connect to Tor, now is an excellent time to get started! You can find
  the requirements and instructions for running a WebTunnel bridge in the
  [3]Tor Community portal.

What is WebTunnel and how does it work?

  WebTunnel is a censorship-resistant pluggable transport designed to
  mimic encrypted web traffic (HTTPS) inspired by [4]HTTPT. It works by
  wrapping the payload connection into a WebSocket-like HTTPS connection,
  appearing to network observers as an ordinary HTTPS (WebSocket)
  connection. So, for an onlooker without the knowledge of the hidden
  path, it just looks like a regular HTTP connection to a webpage server
  giving the impression that the user is simply browsing the web.

  In fact, WebTunnel is so similar to ordinary web traffic that it can
  coexist with a website on the same network endpoint, meaning the same
  domain, IP address, and port. This coexistence allows a standard
  traffic reverse proxy to forward both ordinary web traffic and
  WebTunnel to their respective application servers. As a result, when
  someone attempts to visit the website at the shared network address,
  they will simply perceive the content of that website address and won't
  notice the existence of a secret bridge (WebTunnel).

Comparing WebTunnel to obfs4 bridges

  WebTunnel can be used as an alternative to obfs4 for most Tor Browser
  users. While obfs4 and other fully encrypted traffic aim to be entirely
  distinct and unrecognizable, WebTunnel's approach to mimicking known
  and typical web traffic makes it more effective in scenarios where
  there is a protocol allow list and a deny-by-default network
  environment.

  Consider a network traffic censorship mechanism as a coin sorting
  machine, with coins representing the flowing traffic. Traditionally,
  such a machine checks if the coin fits a known shape and allows it to
  pass if it does or discards it if it does not. In the case of fully
  encrypted, unknown traffic, as demonstrated in the published research
  [5]How the Great Firewall of China Detects and Blocks Fully Encrypted
  Traffic, which doesn't conform to any specific shape, it would be
  subject to censorship. In our coin analogy, not only must the coin not
  fit the shape of any known blocked protocol, it also needs to fit a
  recognized allowed shape--otherwise, it would be dropped. Obfs4
  traffic, being neither a match for any known allowed protocol nor a
  text protocol, would be rejected. In contrast, WebTunnel traffic
  resembling HTTPS traffic, a permitted protocol, will pass.

  If you want to learn more about bridges, different designs and how they
  work, [6]check out our video series.

How to use a WebTunnel Bridge?

🌉 Step 1 - Getting a WebTunnel bridge

  At the moment, WebTunnel bridges are only distributed via the Tor
  Project bridges website. We plan to include more distributor methods
  like Telegram and moat.
   1. Using your regular web browser, visit the website:
      [7]https://bridges.torproject.org/options
   2. In "Advanced Options", select "webtunnel" from the dropdown menu,
      and click on "Get Bridges".
   3. Solve the captcha.
   4. Copy the bridge line.

💻 Step 2 - Download and install Tor Browser for Desktop

  Note: WebTunnel bridges will not work on old versions of Tor Browser
  (12.5.x).
   1. Download and install the latest version of Tor Browser for Desktop.
   2. Open Tor Browser and go to the Connection preferences window (or
      click on "Configure Connection").
   3. Click on "Add a Bridge Manually" and add the bridge lines provided
      on Step 1.
   4. Close the bridge dialog and click on "Connect."
   5. Note any issues or unexpected behavior while using WebTunnel.

📲 Or Download and install Tor Browser for Android

   1. Download and install the latest version of Tor Browser for Android.
   2. Run Tor Browser and choose the option to configure a bridge.
   3. Select "Provide a Bridge I know" and enter the provided bridge
      addresses.
   4. Tap "OK" and, if everything works well, it will connect.

✍️ Step 3 - Share feedback with us

  Your feedback is crucial to help us identify any issues and ensuring
  the reliability of WebTunnel bridges. For users living in censored
  regions, we would love to hear how this new bridge's performance
  compares to other circumvention methods such as obfs4 and Snowflake.

Thank you to all the volunteers who have contributed to making WebTunnel
possible

  The more tools we have at our disposal, the better we will be able to
  target our response, keeping censors at bay and enabling millions of
  users to access the free and open internet. We first [8]announced this
  new bridge type in October 2023 with a call for testers asking Tor
  users for whom it was safe to use WebTunnel to provide feedback. So
  many of you sprung into action and we received a lot of feedback, both
  public and private, that allowed us to make numerous stability
  improvements to WebTunnel.

  Right now, there are [9]60 WebTunnel bridges hosted all over the world,
  and [10]more than 700 daily active users using WebTunnel on different
  platforms. However, while WebTunnel works in regions like China and
  Russia, it does not currently work in some regions in Iran.

  Our goal is to ensure that Tor works for everyone. Amid geopolitical
  conflicts that put millions of people at risk, the internet has become
  crucial for us to communicate, to witness and share what is happening
  around the world, to organize, to defend human rights, and to build
  solidarity. That is why our community's volunteer contributions are
  vital. Remember, there are many ways to get engaged: You can run more
  [11]bridges, [12]Snowflake proxies and [13]relays to continue our fight
  against censorship and for free and open access to the unrestricted
  internet.

References

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Day_Against_Cyber_Censorship
  2. https://blog.torproject.org/2024-defend-internet-freedom-during-elections/
  3. https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/webtunnel/
  4. https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci20/presentation/frolov
  5. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentation/wu-mingshi
  6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mdtSgHWhXY
  7. https://bridges.torproject.org/options
  8. https://forum.torproject.org/t/call-for-testers-webtunnel-a-new-way-to-bypass-censorship-with-tor-browser/9855
  9. https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/transport:webtunnel?fields=transports
 10. https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-transport.html?start=2023-12-08&end=2024-03-07&transport=webtunnel
 11. https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge
 12. https://snowflake.torproject.org/
 13. https://community.torproject.org/relay/

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