[tor-relays] Maybe the next step in russian Tor discrimination

[newsletter at unicorncloud.org]

Hi,
I've made the same experience with my node in RU.

Greetings,
Sebastian Elisa

On 02.01.2022 16:09, abuse--- via tor-relays wrote:
> Very interesting!
> 
> I have two VPS at different locations with justhost.ru (IQ Data St.
> Petersburg and DataLine Moscow - AS51659) and have also noticed a
> change:
> 
> - on December 30th, both servers could not reach deb.torproject.org
> and the torproject.org web page. Both IPv4 and IPv6 were blocked.
> 
> - I tried again today and everything worked fine. I even downloaded
> the tor browser bundle for Windows over one of the servers just to see
> if it works. It does and the signature also checks out (verified on a
> different server outside Russia)
> 
> - running tor nodes at both locations continues to work
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Kristian
> 
> Jan 2, 2022, 08:22 by torrelaysaregreat at gmail.com:
> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> i have a relay at profitserver.ru [1] at their Chelyabinsk location
>> and recently the relay fell out of the consensus.
>> 
>> I can ping all authorities with IPv4 and IPv6 and torproject.org [2]
>> is not blocked.
>> 
>> I opened the ControlPort and tried to manually create circuits to
>> the authorities.
>> 
>> extendcircuit 0 authoritynickname
>> 
>> getinfo circuit-status
>> 
>> I observed that i can successfully create circuits to no more than
>> three authorities and it seems to change to which authorities i can
>> create circuits.
>> 
>> The unsuccessful circuits stay in EXTENDED but never reach BUILT
>> until Tor gives up eventually.
>> 
>> Currently no other of my russian relays are affected.
>> 
>> I am not an expert with the ControlPort but i hope this is proving
>> what i tried to prove.
>> 
>> Here is the conversation with the support:
>> 
>> me:
>> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I am running a (non-exit) Tor relay on the VPS and it stopped
>> working a few weeks ago.
>> 
>> I can ping the Tor authorities IP addresses but when i try to
>> manually create a Tor circuit it seems to timeout 6 out of 9 times
>> which indicates some blocking attempts on your (or your upstream
>> providers) side.
>> 
>> I have a couple of other Tor relays in russia and i have never seen
>> routinely failing manually created circuits to the Tor authorities.
>> 
>> Do you block Tor or do you otherwise mess with Tor traffic?
>> 
>> support agent:
>> Hello, i can't say something about TOR network, now.
>> We have black box from government, which can control traffic, and
>> perhaps block TOR.
>> Ourselves don't block TOR
>> 
>> me:
>> Thanks for your answer.
>> The TSPU from Roskomnadzor that is doing Deep Packet Inspection?
>> I feel with you and all the russian citizens... :(
>> Good luck
>> 
>> support agent:
>> 
>> Maybe it's a black box
>> 
>> If this is indeed their blackbox messing with Tor traffic then it is
>> quite subtile because it does not block torproject.org [2] and pings
>> to the authorities are going through.
>> The relay suddenly was online for one consensus in the last weeks
>> and i can still use it when i manually set it as a Guard in my Tor
>> client.
>> 
>> So if you run a relay in russia and you experience weird stuff with
>> it then you may not only want to check if you can reach the
>> authorities by ping but you may want to try to manually craft a
>> circuit to all of them.
>> 
>> Hope that helps anyone
>> 
>> Cheers
> 
> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://profitserver.ru
> [2] http://torproject.org
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