Snowflake (software)

Snowflake is a software package for assisting others in circumventing internet censorship by relaying data requests. Snowflake relay nodes are meant to be created by people in countries where Tor and Snowflake are not blocked.^[1] People under censorship then use a Snowflake client, packaged with the Tor Browser or Onion Browser,^[2] to access the Tor network, using Snowflake relays as proxy servers. Access to the Tor network can in turn give access to other blocked services (like blocked websites).^[1] A Snowflake node can be created by either installing a browser extension, installing a stand-alone program, or browsing a webpage with an embedded Snowflake relay. The node runs whenever the browser or program is connected to the internet.

Tor relays content requests through a chain of Tor nodes, including Snowflake nodes (onion routing). Each node in the chain only knows the addresses of the two adjacent links and cannot decrypt any of the other data it is relaying, which makes tracking or blocking the traffic much more difficult. A common countermeasure is blocking Tor nodes; the number and shifting nature of the Snowflake nodes make identifying and blocking connections to these nodes more difficult.

Tor is itself illegal in some countries. Like the internet, it can relay any sort of content, and some types of content are illegal in some countries.