A court ruling allowed The Tor Project’s home page to be accessed in the Russian Federation. Ekaterina Abashina, a lawyer for Roskomsvoboda who represents the group’s interests throughout the proceedings, reported this.

Additionally, the website vanished from the list of portals that offer information that is forbidden in Russia.

“Indecently dragged on” when the site was unblocked. The court ordered the unblocking on May 19, 2022, but it wasn’t carried out until today.

In December 2021, the tor website was disabled. The Russian government has made accusations against Tor because it provides access to the dark web.

The decision to block was overturned on May 19, and since then, there hasn’t been a need to include The Tor Project website in the list of prohibited information, she pointed out.

She also participated in the lawsuit where Google, which was forced to take the browser from Google Play, requested a delay. The hearing was postponed by the court.

Recall that early December saw the start of the fixing of the blockage of Tor in the Russian Federation. The Saratov District Court’s 2017 ruling served as the official justification for the access restrictions.

Lawyers for Roskomsvoboda appealed the blocking. The Saratov Court’s judgment was overturned by the Court of Appeal in May.

The Tor Project team unveiled an upgraded browser targeted on getting around blocking on July 15.

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Tor Project team has announced the availability of Tor Browser 11.5, a significant update that adds new functionality to make it easier for users to circumvent censorship.

To provide users with anonymity and privacy when accessing the information on the internet, the Tor Browser was developed specifically for using websites through The Onion Router (Tor) network.

This is accomplished by encrypting all traffic as it travels through network nodes to achieve this goal. An exit node is used to send the data back to the user after the connection has reached the destination.

Auto block bypassing

The improvements made to Tor Browser 10.5 improved the Tor connection experience, but the main focus of the upgrades in version 11.5 is avoiding censorship.

Users no longer need to manually test out bridge settings in order to unblock Tor in the latest version.

The “Connection Assist” feature of Tor Browser version 11.5 assigns automatically the bridge configuration that is known to function best for the user’s location.

“Connection Assist works by looking up and downloading an up-to-date list of country-specific options to try using your location (with your consent),” the release announcement explains.

“It manages to do so without needing to connect to the Tor Network first by utilizing moat – the same domain-fronting tool that Tor Browser uses to request a bridge from torproject.org.”

The Tor team is open to user feedback and reports as Connection Assist is still in its early stages of development (v1.0), as this will help them work out any glitches and enhance the system.

HTTPS is on by default

Making “HTTPS-Only Mode” the default browser mode in version 11.5 ensures that the connection is made through a secure tunnel.

This protects users from man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks and SSL stripping on rogue exit relays by ensuring that all data exchanged between the user and the server running the website is secured.

The HTTPS-Everywhere extension, which served as an onion name translator, has been deprecated and replaced, but the Tor team assures users that SecureDrop will still function as intended.

Android, which has traditionally lagged behind, is the only platform where the new HTTPS-Only Mode will not replace HTTPS-Everywhere.

This was acknowledged by the Tor development team, who also committed to doing more to support Android by issuing updates more often, resolving the numerous bugs that have accrued, and keeping up with Fenix (Firefox for Android) releases.

Better settings

The Network Options menu has been completely redesigned and is now called “Connection Settings” in Tor Browser 11.5; this change should make it simpler to locate and comprehend particular settings.

The bridge configuration and connecting options have been revised in particular to make evaluation and management quick and simple.

The new interface gives visualisation for the configuration for the first time using emojis on the saved Bridges, making it simple to recognise and choose the appropriate bridge when required.

The most recent version of the Tor Browser is available for download from the official download page as a portable binary or an installable package depending on your OS architecture.

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The Tor network now hosts a version of the Twitter website, just days after the Russian government blocked access to it and several other sites.

According to an announcement made on Twitter after midnight today by software developer and internet security evangelist Alec Muffett, Twitter has launched its website on the Tor (The Onion Router) network.

Muffet has previously assisted organisations such as the New York Times, Wikipedia, and BBC News in developing services for the Tor network. According to him, he also assisted Twitter developers in their implementation of the Tor network. Twitter has added the Tor network and browser to its list of supported browsers. It can be accessed via the Tor network via:

https://twitter3e4tixl4xyajtrzo62zg5vztmjuricljdp2c5kshju4avyoid.onion/

This action by the corporation comes at a time when the Russian government has blocked access to sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and several news platforms, ostensibly to isolate the home audience from global news and viewpoints.

This is possibly the most important and long-awaited tweet that I've ever composed.

On behalf of @Twitter, I am delighted to announce their new @TorProject onion service, at:https://t.co/Un8u0AEXeE pic.twitter.com/AgEV4ZZt3k

— Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) March 8, 2022

This means that both the user and the web server are being anonymized. Otherwise, the user’s traffic is diverted via Tor relays before exiting the network via an exit node.

This also implies that the possibility of rogue Tor exit nodes is reduced, allowing users to bypass most national website bans. According to Muffet’s blog, if you write in the exact.onion address for a website, you will either connect to the genuine page or nothing at all.

While you could previously visit Twitter’s regular website via the Tor network, the new.onion domain is solely available via the Tor network and browser. Furthermore, because the site is now part of the Tor network, traffic does not need to be routed through a Tor exit node.

If you’ve ever used the Tor network to access ordinary websites, you may have observed that they frequently need users to enter several CAPTCHA codes, and sometimes don’t work at all, displaying the message “Our systems have identified unusual behaviour from your computer network.” Please retry your request later.”

This is determined by your exit node’s IP repute. Having a service based on Tor helps to alleviate this issue as well.

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