Hi,
I was reading about blocking in Egypt: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/egypt-network-interference/
And noticed that you were still using Tor 0.2.7: https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/measurement/20161026T162218Z_AS36935_kT... which Egypt blocks by blocking connections to the directory authorities.
You say: "In our testing we found 7 out of 9 directory authority consensus file requests to be blocked:"
Tor Browser uses Tor 0.2.8, which: * bootstraps using Fallback Directory mirrors as well as Authorities https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/FallbackDirectoryMirrors * tries 5 fallbacks and 2 authorities before giving up https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4483 * only bootstraps over the ORPort https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/18483
I think these changes make Tor harder to block, except perhaps for the ORPort bootstrap change, which means tor can be blocked using only the SSL handshake. (But it secures the HTTP headers from interference.)
Can you repeat the Egypt tests with Tor 0.2.8? We've heard from users in Mexico that it evades some of their ISP blocks.
T