Use of obfs4proxy in tor to bypass censorship

To bypass censorship in certain parts of the world you can use obfs4 bridges in tor.
Send an email to frontdesk@torproject.org with “private bridge ” in the subject.
They will send you private obfs4 bridges in your country you can use with tor.

Login to StartOS over SSH and switch to the root user:

sudo -i

Run the following command to switch to the “chrooted” environment, any system changes made now will be persisted across reboots.

/usr/lib/startos/scripts/chroot-and-upgrade

Run the follwing command, this will install ‘obfs4proxy’ on your server.

apt install obfs4proxy

Now exit the chroot environment. Note: this will reboot StartOS!

exit

Logon and switch to root user:

sudo -i

Add the following lines to /etc/tor/torrc, use the bridges you received from torproject.org.

UseBridges 1
ClientTransportPlugin obfs4 exec /usr/bin/obfs4proxy
Bridge obfs4 IP ADDRESS:PORT FINGERPRINT cert=CERTIFICATE iat-mode=NUMBER

Now restart tor with the following command:

systemctl restart tor

Tor logs can be viewed with the following command, or use the StartOS UI.

journalctl -b --no-pager /usr/bin/tor

Write a script called ‘postinit.sh’ that adds the extra lines in /etc/tor/torrc
because torrc gets overwritten during restart.

Put the script into “/media/embassy/config/” which will run each time the server starts up.

Restart your server and check if it works.

2 Likes

Do you have any insight into which countries actively censor Tor connections? I’m simply curious about the extent of such censorship efforts. Thank you for sharing this information.

No I don’t, but I think most countries with authoritarian regimes actively censor Tor.