Snowflake

Infraestrutura P2P

A pluggable transport for the Tor network that uses ephemeral volunteer browser proxies to help censored users circumvent internet blocks. Volunteers run lightweight WebRTC proxies (via browser extension, webpage tab, or standalone binary) that relay traffic to a Tor bridge, disguising the connection as ordinary WebRTC video/voice traffic.

Comunidade

Links

Visitar Website Sugerir uma correção

Detalhes

Licença

BSD-3-Clause (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake)

Status de Dev 🟢 Ativo

Detalhe do Status de Dev

Released (production)

Proprietário

Tor Project, Inc. / Originally created by Serene (hacker / former Google engineer)

Órgão de Governança The Tor Project, Inc. (non-profit)

País

USA

Ano de Início 2016

Stack

Go (snowflake client + standalone proxy); JavaScript (browser proxy extension); WebRTC (data channels for P2P traffic)

Financiamento

OTF (Open Technology Fund) — funded Snowstorm (Rust rewrite, 2023); Tor Project general funding; volunteer-operated bridges raise funds via Open Collective

Última Investigação 9 de mar. de 2026

Domínios de Caso de Uso

Evolução de Plataformas e Soberania

Capacidades

Autoalojável

Infraestrutura P2P Atributos

Origens

Flashproxy (predecessor, deprecated); uProxy (Google Ideas/Jigsaw, 2013-2016) — Snowflake evolved the ephemeral proxy concept with WebRTC + automatic NAT traversal

Banco de Dados

N/A (transport relay, no data store)

Formatos de Dados

Arbitrary (application-agnostic transport; disguised as WebRTC data channel)

Suporte Móvel

N/A (volunteer proxy infrastructure)

Suporte Web

Yes (browser extension for Firefox and Chrome)

Aplicativos Nativos

Yes (standalone binary for Linux/macOS/Windows; gomobile for Android)

Termos

Free (volunteer bandwidth donation; no compensation to proxy operators)

Fundos

OTF grant (amount undisclosed); Open Collective community donations for bridge operating costs

Baseado Em

Flashproxy (ephemerality concept); WebRTC (P2P transport); domain fronting (broker rendezvous via CDN)

Arquitetura P2P

Ephemeral WebRTC peer-to-peer proxy mesh; domain fronting for broker signaling

Rede de Sobreposição

Global broker-mediated (clients matched to available proxies via centralized broker using domain fronting; traffic flows P2P)

Endereçamento por Conteúdo

Local-First

N/A (routing infrastructure, not storage)

Criptografia de Ponta a Ponta (E2EE)

Yes — traffic encrypted by Tor's onion encryption layers; WebRTC DTLS for transport

Tolerância a Falhas Bizantinas

Assinatura

TLS (DTLS for WebRTC transport); Tor circuit encryption layers

Permissões

N/A (open relay; no access control — any censored user matched by broker)

Maturidade / Padronização do Protocolo

Community Standard (Tor pluggable transport v2.1 spec; open specification, active community development)

Função de Infraestrutura

Censorship circumvention; Relay / proxy

Modelo de Ameaça

State-level censorship; DPI (Deep Packet Inspection); ISP-level blocking; IP enumeration blocking

Modelo de Nó Voluntário

Volunteer-operated (browser extension or tab); Embedded (runs on user device while browser is open)

Visibilidade do Tráfego

No content (encrypted payload only); Partial metadata — proxy sees client IP and Tor bridge destination but not content or final destination

Escala de Implantação Ativa

~140,000 unique proxy IP addresses concurrently (2024); ~35,000 daily users connecting via Snowflake; ~29 TB daily traffic relayed