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How was the Snowflake proxy used in 2023?

Snowflake bridge metrics 2023 year in review

https://forum.torproject.org/t/snowflake-bridge-metrics-2023-year-in-review/11149

This is a summary of usage of the Snowflake pluggable transport in 2023. For the previous year’s summary, see the Snowflake 2022 year in review. The primary Snowflake bridge, called snowflake-01, is supported by donations. In 2023, the Snowflake Daily Operations team paid about €4,820 in hosting expenses to keep the bridge running—with most of that going for bandwidth. In 2024, in addition to paying for bandwidth, we would like to buy new hardware for the bridge, which will enable it to support...

We can also break down users by country. The largest contingent of Snowflake users are in Iran, which has been the case since the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022 1. The graph shows also a large number of users apparently from the United States, but we believe that may be partly the result of geolocation errors, and many of them are actually from Iran. After Iran, the countries with the most Snowflake users are Russia and China.

22 comments

Gooey0210

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Snowflake relaying from all my devices 1000027251

N0x0n

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Any way to make it work on Android firefox? I have an old android lying around would be nice to make it useful to people in need.

EDIT:

Never mind, installed orbot :)

Gooey0210

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You can even do a real relay, not an exit node of course, normal relay should be safe

N0x0n

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Didn't dived to much into Tor, what's the big difference between a real relay node and a snowflake? If you don't mind to briefly explain it !

Haha, yeah I'm aware of exit nodes...

Gooey0210

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Haha, yeah I'm aware of exit nodes...

Dude, don't even ask, we are people, and we were born to talk and explain, and be curious!

Snowflake is a bridge, it helps people bypass restrictions applied by their governments/networks

Relay is a tor node/hop, this is what makes tor possible, be one of the nodes people's traffic goes through (without allowing them to access the normal internet) Doing this helps decentralization of the tor, and prevents big organizations from pinpointing users

N0x0n

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Thanks 👍

supervent

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Snowflake/bridge is used when you do not want the authorities/ISP know, you are using tor or because it might be blocked (like on contries with censorship). When you are running snowflake/bridge you are helping these users. For the contrary, if you use a normal tor relay, they(ISP, authorities, who ever is watching your connection) know, but they do not know what you are doing.

Pantherina

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A proxy is normally only shown if you cannot connect to their entry servers regularly. More apps have this, Signal / Molly, Telegram, ...

So nobody uses a proxy if they dont need to, normally

KarnaSubarna

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Source: https://snowflake.torproject.org/

KarnaSubarna

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If installing extension is not an option for you -

You can open https://snowflake.torproject.org/ (or https://relay.love/) on a tab,
scroll down to 'Leave this browser tab open or embed a web badge on your website' section
toggle 'Enabled' button
and leave the browser running.
Note: Browser needs to have WebRTC enabled to make it work.

I'm personally running Snowflake container on docker on my little Raspberry pi 24/7. And, yes, in 2023 most of the connection to my bridge was from Iran.

N0x0n

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Thanks for the tip :) I disable WebRTC by default on my browsers. The Android Orbot app seems to do the trick ! Already helped out 4 people.

mp3

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What I like is how easy it is to become a Snowflake proxy. Just install the addon on your normal browser, and turn it on.

https://snowflake.torproject.org/

RustyNova

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What a bunch of snowflakes

MigratingtoLemmy

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Can someone help me understand how this might be a better idea than using an SSL-VPN such as OpenVPN/SoftEther and connecting to TOR from the VPN endpoint instead of using Snowflake?

I'd like to use my own infrastructure and am also looking for comparisons/security analysis of Snowflake

oversea

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It works for people where vpn protocols are blocked

Pantherina

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The Proxy is for people that can not access the Tor network.

For your own comfort/anonymity using a VPN is the better option.

MigratingtoLemmy

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If they could run their own SSL-VPNs and then access TOR through them, like I described, would there be a point in Snowflake?

Pantherina

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Snowflake works for people that may not be able to get crypto or anonymous cash per letter. How would they pay the VPN?

MigratingtoLemmy

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Ah, I forgot that Monero in exchange for cash might not be an option here. Apologies, you're right. With that, I'd also like a comparison of security between these two approaches

Pantherina

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Snowflake is encrypted but I dont know with what protocol. TLS at least so at least as secure as the regular internet including all banking sites.

Yeah, Snowflake being tied to this one use case also prevents abuse. Imagine having "free VPN ran on my Computer for the Iranians", that would be abused like hell.

moonpiedumplings

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They could. But in countries where internet access is restricted by authorities, running any more than an insignificant amount of traffic over a VPN, even protocols as stealthy as the ones that make them indistinguishable from website (http/s) traffic, can be noticable... and being noticed can get you killed.

Snowflake, on the other hand, runs proxies to users of the snowflake browser extension, who act as entry points. It's named so because connections are ephemeral, and last for a short time, like snowflakes. This makes it much harder to distinguish.

It's not only about what internet traffic, it's also about where.

And of course, the how is relevant too. Not many people want to spend the time to set up an ssl vpn (and multiple people using it makes it easier to spot).

You need to understand what you're asking when you suggest people set up their own proxy. You're asking them to learn a skill, most likely in their free time (free time and energy they may not even have), and without many resources to learn (censored internet), and then rest their lives and livelihoods on that skill. Depending on the regime, maybe the lives of their friends and family, as well.

Comparatively, it's like two clicks to select snowflake as an entrypoint in the tor browser configuration options.

MigratingtoLemmy

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I completely understand the point about Snowflake having been created for use in such scenarios.

Your comment raised a couple of interesting points though.

If governments are able to identify SSL-VPN traffic, then the VPN technology isn't working as expected. That's a failing from the VPN's side in that case. One way in which I could clearly see such traffic being compromised is by logging the hops that traffic takes, and realising that everything is going through a single point, I.e. a VPN. But if one were to use a revolving VPN, that shouldn't be a problem in theory.
My original question was more in the line of "what tech does snowflake use that distinguishes itself from SSL-VPNs in terms of masking traffic?"
Since you raised the point about snowflake connections being ephemeral, I'll assume that snowflake connections are automatically rotated across available peers without the user having to set it up? However, just like with the rest of TOR, most governments can rent a bunch of cloud infrastructure and deal with deanonymising this part of the chain too.

And let's be honest here: TOR isn't exactly the most private network on the planet. It's well known that TOR devs collaborate with the 5 eyes and have backdoors built in, alongside the American agencies having access to a lot of the traffic on TOR to be able to mathematically deduce origin and destination of traffic including up to the point of clearnet IP addresses.