In the previous section, we learned how your Internet service provider or your network admin could
block you from accessing TOR.
We also learned that we can use Tor bridges or pluggable transports to bypass this and access the Tor
network.
You might also want to use Tor bridges or pluggable transports, even if you're not being blocked from
using TOR.
If you just want to hide the fact that you are using Tor.
Because as I mentioned previously, when you use Tor your internet service provider or your network
admin or anyone who is intercepting connections, they'll be able to know that you're using Tor.
They won't see the websites that you're accessing, but they will be able to know that you're using
the Tor network.
Therefore, if this is a problem, if this is something that you want to hide, then you might want
to use tor bridges or pluggable transports.
Now, in the previous section I showed you how to do this if you're using the Tor browser, but right
now we're not using the Tor browser anymore.
We're using tails.
And like I said, Tils is configured to route all traffic through the Tor network, not only browsing
traffic.
Therefore, if you want to use a pluggable transport or a bridge, you need to configure the whole distribution
to route all traffic through this pluggable transport or through this bridge.
So in this lecture, I'm not going to talk a lot about how bridges work and how they allow us to bypass
censorship and use Tor even if it's blocked.
I covered this in details previously, so if you don't remember that, please go back and revise that
lecture.
What I will cover here, though, is how to configure tables to use bridges or pluggable transports.
So right now I have tables booted up right here.
And as you can see, I am able to connect to the Tor network.
So I already went to check the Tor project dot org and everything as you can see, is working as expected.
We can also see here the onion icon does not have an X, so it means that I'm properly connected to
the Tor network.
And if I click on this to open the Tor circuits, you'll see.
We'll get information about the Tor circuits right here.
So everything is working as expected.
But if this did not work for you, so if after loading tables and after connecting to a network, you're
still not able to connect to the Tor network.
If you get an error, if the Onion here has an X, then it is possible that your network administrator
or your internet service provider is preventing you from accessing TOR, or if you just want to hide
the fact that you're using Tor, then we can configure tables to use a pluggable transport or a bridge.
To do this, we'll first need to restart the distribution because we already booted and we need to actually
tell it that I want to use a pluggable transport as soon as it starts.
So here at this welcome message, you want to click on the plus here under the additional settings.
And we want to click on the Network Connection, and I'm going to choose the second option in here.
Configure a third bridge or a local proxy.
I'm going to click on ADD and then I will start tells.
So give it its time to load up the operating system and once it loads it will show you this window right
here which you can use to configure Thales to connect to the Tor network using a bridge or a proxy.
Now, if you notice here on the top right, you can see there is an X beside the onion, meaning that
we're still not connected to the Tor network.
And if I go ahead now and run my browser, I won't even be able to access the Internet.
So I'm offline right now.
So I'm going to click on Configure.
To configure the network settings and I'm going to check this option in here.
Tor is censored in my country and then I'm going to paste the bridges or the pluggable transports that
I have in here.
Now.
I covered multiple methods on how you can get bridges and pluggable transports using emails or using
different domains.
So I'm not going to cover that here.
If you don't remember how to get them, please go back and revise that lecture in the previous section.
Right now I actually have my pluggable transport that I want to use on a USB stick, so I'm going to
connect that to details.
And this will also be good example for you to see how you can interact with the file system.
So I'm just going to go to my home directory just to open the file browser and we can see my removable
disk right here.
I'm going to click it.
And I have my bridges in here in this text file, which is the text as usual, double click to open
a normal text file.
It will open in the default text editor.
I'm going to select everything and copy it, and then I'm going to go back to my configuration window
and paste it here.
So now we're done.
And all I have to do is click on Kinect to Kinect using this pluggable transport.
Just a quick option that I want to highlight in here as well is the proxy option.
You can tick this box if you want to use a proxy, but right now all I want to do is just use this pluggable
transport which I already pasted.
So I'm just going to click on Kinect to use it.
And right now Tails is going to reconfigure my network settings so that all traffic within this operating
system gets routed through this bridge, through this pluggable transport, and then through the Tor
network.
And as you can see right now, it's telling me that Tor is ready and now we are connected to the Internet
through this bridge and through this pluggable transport.
Again, you can see the X has disappeared here from the onion, which means that I am connected.
And just to verify this, I'm going to launch the Tor browser from applications.
And we're going to go to check.
The third project dot org.
And perfect.
As you can see, it's telling us that we are using the Tor network and our IP appears to be this IP
right here.
So everything is configured properly and we have internet access through the Tor network and through
this pluggable transport.
As I mentioned, this can be very helpful if your internet service provider or your admin is preventing
you from accessing the Tor network.
Or if you don't want anyone to know that you're accessing the Tor network, if you want to hide the
fact that you are using the Tor network.