FINDING · EVALUATION
All bridges in a given Tor Browser release batch were blocked simultaneously within a 20-minute window, and every blocking event occurred during China Standard Time business hours (between 10:40 and 17:00 CST). The combination of unpredictable multi-day delay followed by abrupt simultaneous batch blocking suggests a semi-manual process: human analysts discover bridges after an irregular delay, then an automated system applies blocks.
From 2016-fifield-censors — Censors' Delay in Blocking Circumvention Proxies · §4 Results, Table 3 · 2016 · Free and Open Communications on the Internet
Implications
- Bridge lifecycle management should treat batch blocking as the threat model—once one bridge in a release is blocked, all co-released bridges should be considered compromised and rotated.
- Introducing bridges gradually across releases (rather than in large batches) limits the blast radius of a single blocking event.
Tags
Extracted by claude-sonnet-4-6 — review before relying.