The second user group is unable to safely start Whonix ™ in the default configuration due to Tor being considered dangerous or suspicious in their locality. This group is not worried about hiding the use of Tor and will need to use bridges or possibly other circumvention tools. Circumvention is necessary because Whonix ™ would otherwise be rendered useless for most activities except working offline on documents and so on, since all Internet traffic is routed through Tor by default. The first group of users is only concerned with circumventing Tor censorship that is based on IP address or fingerprinting of protocols. Other bridge users: Testing whether the bridge works (automated or manual), probing, people using bridges without their knowledge because they came pre-configured in their bundle.The adversary may be extremely dangerous. Tor may or may not be blocked, but the users are trying to hide the fact they're using Tor.The adversary is not very dangerous, but very annoying. Tor is blocked, and some way - any way - to reach the network has to be found.The minority of users requiring a bridge normally fall into three categories:
Tor non-functionality is often related to local configuration problems rather than ISP or state-level censorship.įor the majority of Whonix ™ users, connecting to Tor with the default configuration is appropriate and will work successfully. Using a bridge makes it harder, but not impossible, for the ISP to determine if a user is connecting to Tor.
Tor bridges ("Tor bridge relays") are alternative entry points to the Tor network, acting as substitutes to regular Tor guards rather than an additional hop to the 3 hop journey. Potential observers include the Internet Service Provider (ISP), advanced adversaries, censorship enforcement bodies and other interested parties. When Tor is used with Whonix ™ in the default configuration, anybody observing the properties of its application protocol can discover its presence. It is rarely necessary to combine Tor with a proxy, VPN or SSH tunnel in order to access content or services that are blocked.
In that case, simple bypass methods usually succeeds in circumventing censorship by destination servers. If a website cannot be reached over Tor, this does not necessarily relate to network level censorship that requires a bridge to be configured it may relate to blacklisting of all Tor exit IP addresses by the server.
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