Tor launches DIY relays in Amazon cloud

The Tor Project is tapping Amazon's EC2 cloud service to make it easier for volunteers to donate bandwidth to the anonymity network.

Developers with the project have released preconfigured Tor Cloud images that volunteers can use to quickly deploy bridges that allow users to access the service. The new system is designed to take some of the pain out running such Tor relays by reducing the work and cost of deploying and running the underlying hardware and software.

“Setting up a Tor bridge on Amazon EC2 is simple and will only take you a couple of minutes,” developers a project member wrote in a post published on Monday. “The images have been configured with automatic package updates and port forwarding, so you do not have to worry about Tor not working or the server not getting security updates.”