Tor Bridges and Pluggable Transports: Bypassing Censorship

In some countries and networks, direct Tor connections are blocked. Tor bridges and pluggable transports disguise Tor traffic to bypass censorship and deep packet inspection (DPI).

What Are Bridges?

Tor bridges are unlisted relay nodes that aren't in the public Tor directory. Since they're not publicly known, censors can't easily block them. You can request bridge addresses from bridges.torproject.org or by emailing [email protected].

obfs4

obfs4 is the most widely used pluggable transport. It transforms Tor traffic to look like random data, defeating DPI that identifies Tor by its traffic signature. To use: in Tor Browser, go to Settings → Connection → Bridges → Use built-in obfs4 bridges.

Snowflake

Snowflake uses WebRTC to disguise Tor traffic as regular video calls. Volunteers run Snowflake proxies in their browsers, creating a constantly changing pool of entry points that's difficult to block. Select Snowflake in Tor Browser's bridge settings.

meek

meek routes traffic through major CDN providers (Azure, Amazon) making it look like you're accessing Microsoft or Amazon services. Blocking meek requires blocking entire cloud platforms, which most censors avoid. Slower but very effective against aggressive censorship.