Gus says the Tor team is working to turn this proposal into reality, and it would essentially assign “reliability” scores around the use of bridges. In 2016, researchers proposed a system called Salmon that aims to weed out those accessing bridge details with the intent of blocking or abusing them. Tor is also working to stop the potential abuse of bridges. “The bridges that they were blocking were not the same bridges that we were sharing with users,” Gus says, adding that Tor has plans to share bridges via Signal and WhatsApp in the future. Gus also says that using Telegram to share details of Tor bridges has been effective in fighting blocks. There are also more volunteer-run bridges that people in Russia can use to access Tor. Gus says it has introduced more support for Russian users, who can report back if they are being blocked. In addition to issuing updates to circumvent the way Tor is being blocked, the nonprofit technology organization has also been directly gathering information from people in Russia.

The latest version of the Tor browser, 11.5, which was released last week, introduces new features to automatically try to help people circumvent censorship based on their location. Roskomnadzor, the Russian internet regulator, had not replied to a request for comment at the time of publication. “They try to simulate that they are a user so they can get the bridge address, and then they block it,” he says.

Gus claims it is likely that some officials in Russia appear to be downloading Tor and then fetching bridges so they can then take steps to block access. “I have some evidence that they are doing that manually,” he says. Gus claims that some of the censorship efforts are being conducted by hand. If Snowflake can be identified, it is easier to block. For instance, the number of times a browser connects with an external source may make it stand out from other browsers. These attacks against Snowflake often involve fingerprinting, which uses small details about browsers and internet connections to try and uniquely identify the technology that someone is using. “They were blocking Snowflake in different ways,” Gus says.

The second, in May of this year, was also patched shortly after it was discovered. The first, in December, was fixed within 10 days. There have been two major incidents against Tor’s Snowflake, Gus says.