The Tor anonymity service has created bypasses to navigate two recent threats from the Russian government and the attackers: One of the threats is that the Russian government is blocking most of the Tor nodes in the country. The other threat was that attackers launched numerous malicious Tor relays that have the potential to break Tor’s anonymity.
To get around the threat posed by the Russian government, Tor managers launched a mirror site that is still accessible in Russia and urged volunteers to bridge private nodes with Tor by allowing users to bypass censorship. To contain the malicious Tor relays, Tor managers confirmed that Tor had removed the nodes as soon as it got wind of such activity.
Advice to users to minimize the damage caused by rogue nodes will also include the use of TLS-based encryption for sending emails and surfing websites, as well as surfing anonymous sites located within the Tor hidden services network.
In its statement, the Russian government, through its Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, known as Roskomnadzor, stated: “The grounds were the spreading of information on the site ensuring the work of services that provide access to illegal content. Today, access to the resource has been restricted.”