Can't connect Tor Network, failed to establish network

Question

I've just started using the latest Tor Browser, connecting through my university connection. When I try to connect, it failed to establish connection with the network after waiting for a long time. I check the log and it says problem bootstrapping, stuck at 10%. My friend who uses Tor Browser and uses the same connection as me can connect to the network and use Tor Browser. We also use the same OS, Windows 8.1

Here is the Tor Log

04/12/2014 19:09:31 PM.120 [NOTICE] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9150 
04/12/2014 19:09:31 PM.623 [NOTICE] Bootstrapped 5%: Connecting to directory server 
04/12/2014 19:09:32 PM.110 [NOTICE] Bootstrapped 10%: Finishing handshake with directory server 
04/12/2014 20:35:51 PM.957 [WARN] Problem bootstrapping. Stuck at 10%: Finishing handshake with directory server. (DONE; DONE; count 10; recommendation warn) 
04/12/2014 20:35:51 PM.959 [WARN] 10 connections have failed: 
04/12/2014 20:35:51 PM.959 [WARN]  7 connections died in state handshaking (TLS) with SSL state SSLv2/v3 read server hello A in HANDSHAKE
04/12/2014 20:35:51 PM.959 [WARN]  3 connections died in state connect()ing with SSL state (No SSL object) 
04/12/2014 21:52:23 PM.964 [WARN] Problem bootstrapping. Stuck at 10%: Finishing handshake with directory server. 
(Connection timed out [WSAETIMEDOUT ]; TIMEOUT; count 11; recommendation warn) 

Answer 1

• Try to get bridges from BridgeDB or sending an email to [email protected] and add it to your Tor Browser Bundle. Make sure you add at least one bridge with port number 443 and one with a random port.

• If bridges didn't help, you need Pluggable Transport Bundle. This way it's much harder for your firewall to detect connections to Tor network.

Happy browsing.

Note: if you need more bridges for PT Bundle, try sending an email (from Gmail, Yahoo or mit.edu) to [email protected] with having transport obfs3 or transport obfs4 in your message body.

Answer 2

Try using bridges. The easiest way to block Tor is by downloading the publicly available list of Tor relays and blocking access to all those IP addresses. Bridges are Tor relays that aren't listed in that publicly available list (the consensus). You can get bridges by visiting https://bridges.torproject.org or by sending an email to [email protected] with 'get bridges' in the body of the email.

Once you have a bridge, you can enter it into Vidalia by going to Settings -> Network and ticking the box that says "My ISP blocks connections to the Tor network", then enter the IP address in that space.

Answer 3

There are two options at a start in new TBBs 3.0+. You can connect to the Tor Network directly or use second option Configure which is described as:

"This computer's Internet connection is censored, filtered, or proxied."

Through this option you can easily configure Tor in such situations, while you have to ask for bridge too by visiting https://bridges.torproject.org or mailing "get bridges" line to [email protected] from domains gmail.com or yahoo.com.

Current version is 3.0a4.

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-browser-bundle-30alpha4-released

Answer 4

From what you wrote in your question it seems that connections to the Tor network are blocked. So you need not only bridges, but also so-called pluggable transports. On the page you'll find a download area. Using this packages you should be able to connect to Tor.

Furthermore lately a technique called ScrambleSuit was developed. This even works in this case of active probing. However at the moment you would need to compile the packages for yourself.

Answer 5

Looking at your log message, it appears that your connection to directory authorities are hindered. That is also why you can run Tor browser. Once the connection to Directory authorities are hindered, you can not start any new instances of Tor, but if you have older instances of Tor, it will work for a while beacuse it uses the cache. To solve this paticular problem there are some options, try them and verify which one best works for your situation.

1. Use a bridge. This way if direct connection to directory authorities is not possible, the directory authorities try to connect using a bridge.

2. Use Obfsproxy bridges. If the use of regular bridges are also hindered, then this is your next option.

3. If The use of VPN service is allowed in your community, you may use that to connect to Tor. The preference is to use a free VPN so that you leave no money trail. The other advantage of this method is that your ISP or whoever is blocking your connection to the directory authorities would have difficulty figureing out you have connected to Tor. However, the VPN service you use would know that. Thus, it is best to choose a VPN service out of your area which is not under control or influence of your ISP or whoever is blocking your connection to directory authorities.

4. Use a Web proxy to connect to Tor. Use same precautions described in option 3.

5. You may use any combinations of options 1 to 4. For example you may connect to following services in sequence: VPN1, VPN2, Web proxy1, Web proxy2, Tor. you may even add a web proxy or VPN after Tor in addition to before Tor if you wish.

There are also other ways, but, let us stick with the above methods for the purpose of keeping this article brief.

Answer 6

Meek should work, it doesn't use regular bridges but domain fronting which should get around your proxy I think.

Answer 7

I had the same problem until I changed the default bridges.

Open your Tor browser's folder. Then go to " Browser\TorBrowser\Data\Tor " directory and open a file named "torrc".

add the following code to the end of the file:

UseBridges 1
Bridge ip.ad.dr.ess:port abcd1234hash
Bridge ip.ad.dr.ess:port abcd1234hash
Bridge ip.ad.dr.ess:port abcd1234hash

if you want to undo the changes, just put a '#' before each line.

Answer 8

As per this trac ticket, this is:

almost certainly a problem with your network -- possibly a blocking attempt by your firewall or your ISP.

This email from the tor-talk archives dated 2012-02-28 also has a similar problem which was confirmed to be deep packet inspection by the users ISP. If this is the case for you, the answer is to use obfsproxy to make your traffic appear as if it's some allowed traffic (eg. to disguise your traffic as Skype traffic, or regular HTTP traffic).

_{(source: torproject.org)}

Answer 9

You could check this video out, it is a video on my tech tutorial website that explains how to use Tor even though it is blocked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7VoJ3h7Jt4

Answer 10

The log you have provided, appears to indicate problem connecting to Tor Directory Authorities, most likely because it is somehow blocked. If this diagnosis is correct you may have some options you can try.

1. Use a bridge. This way if direct connection to directory authorities is not possible, the directory authorities try to connect through a bridge.
2. Use Obfsproxy bridges. If the use of regular bridges do not solve your problem.
3. If The use of Web proxy or VPN services are allowed in your community, you may use these services to connect to Tor. The preferance is to use a free VPN and/or Web proxy so that you leave no money trail. The other advantage of this method is that your ISP or whoever is blocking you connection to the directory authorities would have difficulty figureing out you have connected to Tor. However, the VPN or Web proxy service you use would know that. Thus, it is best to choose a VPN or Web proxy service out of your area which should not be under control or influence of your ISP or whoever is blocking your connection to directory authorities.

If non of these methods worked, there is a bigger problem that should be diagnosed first, before one can provide a solution.

Answer 11

Here is the first [WARN] that you get:

4/20/2017 3:12:01 AM.700 [WARN] Problem bootstrapping. Stuck at 10%: Finishing handshake with directory server. (DONE; DONE; count 10; recommendation warn; host CF6D0AAFB385BE71B8E111FC5CFF4B47923733BC at 154.35.175.225:443)

It's telling you that it can't connect to one of the directory servers (which means that it can't download the consensus, or all the informations you need to know about the Tor relays to connect to them and create a circuit)

What this can tell us is that your employer is blocking Tor in your network. The solution in this case would be to use bridges with pluggable transports, which work to disguise your Tor traffic as something else and thus make it harder to block it (try to use obfs4 or meek-amazon or meek-azure).

If you need to re-download Tor again from work see this question: My ISP/Network/Government has blocked access to the TorProject website. How can I download Tor?

Answer 12

It may help to connect to Tor through a bridge relay. How to do that is explained at https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en.

Answer 13

It could be that your college has some type of firewall that is blocking tor. With the way that the tor browser is designed now, you may want to go home and do what I'm about to suggest doing.

Step 1. Go home, and when you are on your home or uncesnored internet connection, connect directly to the tor network first. I will supply screenshots below on what you should do:

EDIT: stack exchage would not allow me to post the screenshots as they were too big, you can find them at this link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bqE0NeM49q_zn0ysvh7NP6o4sJleFsgP

When at home and directly connected to tor, click the onion icon and click "tor network settings".

You will see three options, tor is censored in my country, I use a proxy to access the internet, and this computer goes through a firewall that only allows certain ports.

I would recommend checking the one that says "this computer goes through a firewall that only allows certain ports". This might not be a 100% necessary step for your college firewall, but I would check it in case your college does have a firewall with a super restrictive port blocker; it will say ports 80, 443 which are two ports that need to be open to get a network connection.

Find out if your university uses local proxy settings to access the internet (if they have a proxy server on their network). If they do, check I use a proxy to access the internet and enter the same proxy setting they normally use in there (leave it unchecked if they don't use a proxy server).

Leave the port restriction option mentioned earlier checked, if you have both that checked and the proxy server information entered correctly, try connecting now. If it works then awesome. However it could be the actual tor network itself is blocked. If that's the case, check "tor is censored in my country" This will give you the option to use bridges, unlisted / disguised tor entry points, the point behind them is that because they aren't listed in the public relay list, you can still connect to them if the public tor network is blocked. Try using "select a bridge I know" and try them all and use the one that works. If they get blocked; find more and use the option "provide a bride I know" and enter them."

There are two ways to find bridges.

1. Using a gmail.com or yahoo.com email account (no other email service will be accepted) send an email to [email protected] with the subject line "get help". Doing this will receive an email from tor with how to ask for differently disguised bridges.

2. When on non-censored internet (or on a smartphone) go to https://bridges.torproject.org. Here you can get a list of currently operating bridges as well as their disguise.