Tor Project moves to Azure to continue offering domain fronting
The Tor Project, the organization responsible for, among other things, the management and maintenance of the Tor network, has announced that it is switching to Microsoft Azure to continue offering domain fronting.
The organization writes that the decision follows the decision of Google and Amazon to restrict the practice. However, the move to Azure is expected to be temporary, because there are indications that Microsoft also wants to put a stop to domain fronting. The Tor Project writes: “Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there is a quick fix. We were not informed about these changes in advance, so we are thinking hard about possible solutions to ensure that our friends in oppressive regimes are aware of the worldwide still have access to the open web.”
According to the organization, there is no concealing that a user connects to the Tor network. In addition, it is possible for, for example, a government to block all relays, so that access to the anonymous network is blocked. To solve this problem, so-called pluggable transports have been created that adapt the internet traffic to the access point. One of these methods, called meek, uses domain fronting, according to the Tor Project.
This is a method of making the destination of internet traffic appear different than it actually is. For example, traffic from outside seems to go to Google, Amazon or in this case Azure, but it is actually destined for a Tor relay. This week, Open Whisper Systems, the company behind the Signal chat app, published an email it received from Amazon. In it, the company asked the organization to stop domain fronting. Signal first used this technique in 2016. Civil rights organization Access Now, among others, is critical of the blocking of the technique by large internet companies.