wkrp
commented
1 year ago The second Snowflake bridge is now available in an alpha release, 12.0a5:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-announce/2022-December/000256.html https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbrowser/12.0a5/
Bug tor-browser-build#40674: Add Secondary Snowflake Bridge
How it works is: both the snowflake-01 and snowflake-02 bridges will be activated when you choose Snowflake under "Select a Built-In Bridge...". You can tell which bridge is being used for a circuit (in the URL bar). If the IP address is 192.0.2.3, it is the snowflake-01 bridge. If the IP address is 192.0.2.4, it is the snowflake-02 bridge. The IP addresses are just placeholder labels (the browser is not really connecting to those IP addresses).
The new alpha release has a lot of other significant changes as well. The maintainers are asking that this release be tested specially. One of the changes is that all localizations are bundled into one download (no more separate en, zh, ar, ru, etc. downloads).
Multi-locale bundles (Desktop)
As of Tor Browser 12.0a4, all supported languages are now included in a single bundle, and can be changed without requiring additional downloads via the Language menu in General settings on the about:preferences page.
What to test: Tor Browser Alpha should default to your system language on first launch if it matches a language we support. Alpha testers are also encouraged to test changing language within about:preferences#general, and to report any new bugs with localization in general (in particular instances of 'Firefox' appearing instead of 'Tor Browser' or other similar branding issues).
The Snowflake team has done a lot of work on "vertical" scaling of the snowflake-01 bridge, making the host capable of handling more concurrent users. They are also now doing "horizontal" scaling, by setting up a new snowflake-02 bridge to share the load. The second bridge is scheduled to be enabled in the next Tor Browser alpha release, 12.0a5, but you can test it yourself now, by entering a bridge line manually.
Short instructions: take any working Snowflake bridge line, and change the fingerprint
2B280B23E1107BB62ABFC40DDCC8824814F80A72to8838024498816A039FCBBAB14E6F40A0843051FA. There are two places where you need to change the fingerprint.Longer instructions:
snowflake 192.0.2.4:80 8838024498816A039FCBBAB14E6F40A0843051FA fingerprint=8838024498816A039FCBBAB14E6F40A0843051FA url=https://snowflake-broker.torproject.net.global.prod.fastly.net/ front=cdn.sstatic.net ice=stun:stun.l.google.com:19302,stun:stun.altar.com.pl:3478,stun:stun.antisip.com:3478,stun:stun.bluesip.net:3478,stun:stun.dus.net:3478,stun:stun.epygi.com:3478,stun:stun.sonetel.com:3478,stun:stun.sonetel.net:3478,stun:stun.stunprotocol.org:3478,stun:stun.uls.co.za:3478,stun:stun.voipgate.com:3478,stun:stun.voys.nl:3478 utls-imitate=hellorandomizedalpnTo check if it's working, you can check the Tor log for a
new bridge descriptorline.flakeyNis the snowflake-01 bridge;crustyNis the snowflake-02 bridge.The purpose of the second bridge is to increase capacity. It will not have any effect on blocking resistance. It does not change anything about broker interaction or the way the Snowflake client interacts with proxies. If you want to experiment with different settings for
url,front,ampcache, andutls, as suggested here and here, you can do that independently of changing the bridge fingerprint.We will likely need to restart the snowflake-02 bridge multiple times over the coming days for upgrades and configuration changes, so be aware there may be some disruption in availability.