[tor-bugs] #4185 [Tor Bridge]: Bridge easily detected by GFW

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#4185: Bridge easily detected by GFW
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 Reporter:  hrimfaxi    |          Owner:                    
     Type:  defect      |         Status:  new               
 Priority:  normal      |      Milestone:  Tor: unspecified  
Component:  Tor Bridge  |        Version:  Tor: 0.2.3.5-alpha
 Keywords:  blocking    |         Parent:                    
   Points:              |   Actualpoints:                    
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Changes (by denverroot):

 * cc: denver.root@… (added)


Comment:

 My mother lives in China, and the symptoms described in this ticket are
 quite familiar to me. I am a developer in the US, and have been working
 with her computer from here for quite some time to try and get Tor
 running, only to be foiled 99% of the time by the GFW. In the last three
 years of her living in China, I have observed a lot of odd circumstances
 unfold with her internet access, and some trends lead me to two
 conclusions:
 1. Once China sees "suspicious" activity coming from/happening at a
 particular location, the surveillance and filtering for that location will
 increase, sometimes dramatically. This typically functions like an on/off
 switch, and doesn't have much "fade-in" time.
 2. Although evidence hasn't been conclusive here yet, this is the trend I
 see: they "forget" about the heightened filtering for a particular
 location pretty quickly, typically within a couple days. Often, when my
 mother's traffic has gotten much more interfered with because of whatever
 she did to trigger it, after her IP Address expires and renews to a new
 address, all of that filtering will disappear. I would expect them to
 "follow her" through IP Address expirations/renewals, but that doesn't
 normally seem to happen.

 I don't have a lot of hard data to give you to back these observations up,
 but have been working with her system through a lot of changes, moves, and
 situations, and these two things seem to stick out, at least in ways that
 are of interest here.

 I have talked with Andrew(@torproject) about my mom's situation in the
 past (late September, 2011), and also our willingness to help. I am quite
 willing to help diagnose things, test bridges and experimental solutions,
 etc, if that might help with the things outlined in this ticket, which we
 face regularly, or really if it might help with making Tor more available
 in any way. Her habits keep her out of any kind of lime-light in China,
 which I think is helpful when trying out things like this...

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4185#comment:24>
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