Tor is “An Absolute Evil”Īs spotted by Meduza, On December 6, lawmaker Anton Gorelkin, the chairman of the State Duma’s Information Policy Committee, launched a scathing attack on Tor, describing it as a facilitator of illegal activity. That being said, at least one Russian official is openly supporting the blocking of Tor. Large ISPs showing “anomalous measurements” include Rostelecom, Beeline, Tele2 and NetByNet, according to OONI tests, but the exact scope is currently unknown. The blocking efforts do not currently encompass the whole of Russia but certain regions are reportedly more affected, Moscow in particular.

Reports of early issues on some ISPs were reported by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) on December 1, 2021, with complaints raised on the Tor Project forum shortly after.

The same Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) system was used to throttle Twitter earlier this year and to silence the Smart Voting website developed by jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

According to GlobalCheck, a project that studies local blocking and assists users to bypass restrictive measures, the TSPU (technical tools to counter threats) system has been deployed against some Tor nodes. Since the start of December, efforts have been underway to begin the not-insignificant task of blocking Tor. Of course, when times got really tough there was always the robust, privacy-focused Tor network to fall back on but if the past few days are anything to go by, even this old faithful could find itself severely compromised, at least in Russia. In an effort to control what its citizens can and cannot access on the internet, Russia continues to develop systems for denying access to websites and services.įrom copyright infringing content to terrorist propaganda (and whatever the government deems offensive in between), Russia is determined to implement restrictions on Internet users, regardless of the broader implications.Īt least initially, local users confidently utilized tools including VPNs to circumvent censorship but with rising pressure from the authorities, even these have come under threat, despite the consequences.

Blocking tor network