China censorship requires at least snowflake-client v.2.9.2 to use Whonix

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Dear Patrick & hulahoop

Thank you for this nicely working distro.
Running /usr/bin/snowflake-client --version with default bridges results in:

snowflake-client 2.5.1
2.5.1 came out back in 2023.

It came to my knowledge, that Default Snowflake bridges in Tor browser 13.0.9 is Blocked in China since around 2024-01-12
To circumvent this, New SQS rendezvous method for Snowflake can be used.
Unfortunately, this method requires at least version 2.9.0 of snowflake-client issued on 2024-02-05, or, even better, 2.9.2 to use new sqscreds parameter.

In the meantime, Debian package maintainers seem to abandon snowflake-client package as the last activity took place back in March 2023:
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/snowflake
So to use Whonix, Chinese users have to install Go lang compiler, download Snowflake-client sources and compile them.

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WebTunnel support is also needed.

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Tell me is it possible to connect to tor on whonix in China this way

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@Patrick
I’m not in China, but also in one of extremely censored regions, the only way to connect to Tor are:

  1. WebTunnel
  2. Such style of writing ipv6 bridges, which works in Tor, but doesn’t work in Whonix (GUI throws an incompatible error)
    [2a0b:f4c2:3::90]:9000 225A1FD8FCAD3E4C7938EC841627FC6DB3A4A483

So…Whonix is completely unusable right now, there is no way to connect to it’s Tor network :slightly_frowning_face:
Please, help us.

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Tor and bridges are effectively blocked in China, Russia, Turkmenistan, Belarus, and many countries in Asia. In any case, you will either have to run the latest snowflake versions from GitHub/GitLab yourself, or use most up-to-date firewall/DPI bypass tools, because Patrick and his team do not live in such countries, and governments quickly adapt to bypass methods. Follow bypass tools in thematic chats and forums + in GitHub topic (but use the tools at your own risk). For example, I found several scripts on GitHub to launch webtunnel bridges (these bridges are faster and more effective than snowflake).

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