On December 1, users from Moscow began to report problems with access. It is claimed that Tor was blocked by Rostelecom. "On the night of December 3, several telecom operators, including Rostelecom, MTS, Tele 2 and others, reported network malfunctions," the OONI online censorship tracking project reported.
The expert noted that indirect signs such as meta-information in packets can be used to block traffic in Tor. He added that access to Tor can be blocked by blocking specific servers by IP.
"So far, the use of "bridges" helps <...>, but the lists of bridges are also quite public," Misbakh-Solovyov added. Bridges are anonymous user nodes that do not send information about their IP to the provider's servers. The developers claim that this connection method allows to connect to the network even in countries where Tor is officially blocked.
Anton Gorelkin, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, said that "the restriction of VPNs and anonymizers will have a positive impact on the Russian segment of the network. It will protect Russians from discursive content, all scammers. The founders of Tor, hiding behind a pseudo-liberal agenda, created a service that became an infrastructure for fraudsters, drug sales. This is the entrance to the darknet, where stolen databases and fraudulent schemes are concentrated. Blocking Tor is not only about protecting citizens from destructive content. Blocking will improve the network climate in general. On one side of the scale are some pseudo-liberal values, and on the other side — drug sales, destructive content, scammers."
In 2017, anonymizers and blocking bypass tools were banned in Russia. Since June 2021, Roskomnadzor began blocking VPN services, arguing that their use retains access to child pornography, illegal information about drugs and extremism.
