Re: Iran + tor

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 08:32:21AM -0500, Scott Bennett wrote:
> >If I were a dictator I would force the ISPs to block access to the
> >directory servers. If that's not enough one can retreive the list of all
> >Tor nodes and block them.
> >
> >Can anyone explain me what I am missing?

See e.g. https://www.torproject.org/bridges

>      For blocked directory servers:
> 
> ## Use tunneled directory server connections when available
> ##  (defaults to 0)
> TunnelDirConns 1
> ## Avoid using directory servers that do not provide tunneled connections
> ##  (defaults to 0)
> PreferTunneledDirConns 1

The text you're quoting must be years old. TunnelDirConns and
PreferTunneledDirConns have defaulted to 1 starting in Tor 0.2.0.x.

We made that change in part because Smartfilter and Websense (used in
countries like Iran) learned how to detect the old unencrypted directory
requests from Tor 0.1.2.x and earlier.

--Roger