Blocked Tor exit nodes

Question

I know of several services that block traffic from Tor exit nodes including, as of a couple of months ago, the Australian Legal Information Institute. It's a sad state of affairs given that there are people whose countries block their access to information about the law of other nations and who try to use Tor to circumvent censorship, now only to find themselves stymied by the host that they are trying to reach.

I am familiar with the development by Tor researchers of means of circumventing censorship and giving access to Tor guards. Is there any similar development relating to the exit nodes? For example, one could envisage a changing series of hosts (a kind of "exit bridge" similar to existing bridges) that only accepted traffic from Tor exit nodes ... before passing the traffic on to intended sites.

Am I foolishly hopeful, or is the concept either (i) dead in the water for reasons that I can't envisage, or (ii) already developed?

Answer 1

I am not aware of such a project to enable a bridge exit nodes, thus unlisted or unpublished exit nodes. Maybe one can request for such a feature. However, one can manually simulate such a feature to be utilized under current Tor structure. Therefore, one can add a VPN or Web proxy after the exit node, like the following schematic:

Client---Node 1 (Guard)---Node 2 (Middle Node)--- Node 3 (exit node)---VPN--- destination site

or

Client---Node 1 (Guard)---Node 2 (Middle Node)--- Node 3 (exit node)---Web proxy--- destination site

This will effectively simulate what you are looking for. To understand how to do this, look at this Q&A: Me -> Tor -> Vpn [How?]

Good luck!!!