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All of a sudden starting Tor Browser reproducably gets stuck at loading network status. It worked earlier today and I am not aware of any change on my computer other than shutting it down and starting it again after a couple of hours. Rebooting pc does not help.

tor-browser Launching Tor Browser for Linux in /opt/tor-browser_en-US/Browser... Dec 28 20:14:39.637 [notice] Tor v0.2.5.10 (git-13318a95ddfbbf8d) running on Linux with Libevent 2.0.21-stable, OpenSSL 1.0.1i and Zlib 1.2.3.3. Dec 28 20:14:39.637 [notice] Tor can't help you if you use it wrong! Learn how to be safe at https://www.torproject.org/download/download#warning Dec 28 20:14:39.637 [notice] Read configuration file "/opt/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor/torrc-defaults". Dec 28 20:14:39.637 [notice] Read configuration file "/opt/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor/torrc". Dec 28 20:14:39.649 [notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9150 Dec 28 20:14:39.649 [notice] Opening Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9151 Dec 28 20:14:39.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv4 file /opt/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor/geoip. Dec 28 20:14:39.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv6 file /opt/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor/geoip6. Dec 28 20:14:39.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 0%: Starting Dec 28 20:14:39.000 [notice] Updating address for directory authority Faravahar from 154.35.32.5:80 to 154.35.175.225:80 based on certificate. Dec 28 20:14:40.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 5%: Connecting to directory server Dec 28 20:14:40.000 [notice] New control connection opened from 127.0.0.1. Dec 28 20:14:40.000 [notice] New control connection opened from 127.0.0.1. Dec 28 20:14:40.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 10%: Finishing handshake with directory server Dec 28 20:14:40.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 15%: Establishing an encrypted directory connection Dec 28 20:14:40.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 20%: Asking for networkstatus consensus Dec 28 20:14:40.000 [warn] Received http status code 404 ("Not found") from server '46.166.177.70:443' while fetching "/tor/keys/fp/27B6B5996C426270A5C95488AA5BCEB6BCC86956+585769C78764D58426B8B52B6651A5A71137189A+80550987E1D626E3EBA5E5E75A458DE0626D088C". Dec 28 20:14:41.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 25%: Loading networkstatus consensus Dec 28 20:14:41.000 [warn] Received http status code 404 ("Consensus not signed by sufficient number of requested authorities") from server '46.166.177.70:443' while fetching consensus directory. Dec 28 20:15:42.000 [warn] Received http status code 404 ("Consensus not signed by sufficient number of requested authorities") from server '50.7.161.218:9001' while fetching consensus directory. Dec 28 20:15:42.000 [notice] I learned some more directory information, but not enough to build a circuit: We have no recent usable consensus.

Any idea what could have happened ?

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  • How old is your Tor Browser? That Tor log suggests it's using Tor 0.2.5.10, this is likely the issue.
    – cacahuatl
    Dec 29, 2016 at 0:13
  • Oh no! Are you using one of them that's installed through apt-get? Your Tor Browser is likely massively out of date and has known vulnerabilities with public exploits available for them.
    – cacahuatl
    Dec 29, 2016 at 0:15

1 Answer 1

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tldr: Your Tor Browser is ancient, insecure, and will have intermittent breakage. Update it.

The tor daemon has a hardcoded list of directory authorities. Because your Tor Browser (and thus tor) installation is ancient, this list is out of date, leading you to only trust a subset of the current directory authorities.

Yesterday maatuska missed voting on a consensus, and so, your tor daemon thought that not enough directory authorities voted, when if you were running something up to date, things would have been fine.

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