Internet anonymiser runs in the cloud

The Tor Project has invited supporters of its Internet anonymising scheme to set up bridge nodes on Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing network. Bridges act as the first hop onto the Tor network, which then allows Internet users to bypass national firewalls and ISP filtering software, and access the Internet uncensored.

Called Tor Cloud, the preloaded software is ready to deploy on EC2 in six service regions, and is pre-configured for automatic updates and port forwarding, so no user intervention is needed. Tor developers said they were also looking at packaging up versions for other cloud computing services, including Softlayer.com, Hetzner.de and Rackspace. ..

Tor – short for The Onion Router, for its layered nature with no clear centre – is popular with activists, journalists and others, to the extent that it has found its network targeted by apparently-malicious probes from mainland China. Among other uses, bridges provide a way in for users whose ISPs have blocked off the core Tor network. 

In a blog posting, the Tor team noted that while running a bridge on EC2 might normally cost around $30 a month, Amazon has introduced a free usage tier, allowing new customers to run a free micro-instance – such as The Tor Cloud – free for a whole year.