[tor-dev] A meta-package for Pluggable Transports?

[Dafwig]

Ximin Luo:
> I made something like this a few years ago:
> 
> https://people.debian.org/~infinity0/apt/pool/contrib/t/tor-bridge-relay/

A general question, but related to the sample configuration you've
provided here, as well as other instructions I've seen online:

I've heard that the Chinese government tests suspected bridges by
attempting to connect to them and seeing if they respond to the Tor
protocol. Whether China is actually doing this or not, it would not be a
terribly difficult thing for any competent censor to do.

So with this in mind, wouldn't it be best for new bridges to support
ONLY obfs4, and not any of the older protocols?

In particular, it seems like a very bad idea to enable the default
ORPort (9001), unless I'm missing something. Is it actually necessary to
have an open ORPort in order to work as an obfuscated bridge? If it is
necessary, at least that port should be picked randomly to make it
harder for censors to guess. If it's not needed, then that port should
presumably be set to listen only on 127.0.0.1 or similar.

This isn't mentioned in any of the bridge-related documentation I've
seen, though I haven't looked very hard.