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Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

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Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#111

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

NickLamp wrote: post #67
admax88q wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can also think of many things a bad employee might do that the employer should probably care about. But if you hired someone you've given them a tremendous amount of responsibility and power, if you can't trust them to do their job without monitoring everything they do then you should just fire them and hire someone more trustworthy.

To bring up just one thing that doesn't have to do with trustworthiness: If you let an employee onto a 3rd party VPN you open yourself up to a whole new vector of attacks that you can't prevent. And then there's the problem with allowing unrestricted, unmonitored Internet access with regards to auditing and establishing a timeline of events if you ever need to do so.

What attacks are opened by a VPN that aren't open to an ISP or the local coffee shop?

Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#112

Post by cpach »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #110
antihero wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What advantages does this have over something like OpenVPN Road Warrior installer? https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install

We covered weaknesses of OpenVPN and strengths of Wireguard in this sub-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17092338

Thanks!

Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#113

Post by Blindedwino »

theshrike79 wrote: post #83
the8472 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just rent the cheapest cloud server you can find and install a VPN daemon on it. Scaleway is 2€/mo. The smallest AWS spot instances are comparable in price but more of a hassle.

AWS IP ranges have been blacklisted on all streaming sites for years now.

Nah definitely not true, I use a VPN hosted on an AWS EC2 instance and I have no troubles accessing Youtube or Vimeo (or Pornhub).

Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#114

Post by esrauch »

stephenr wrote: post #77
esrauch wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that essentially no one minds a guy glancing at their id and handing it back, and no one cares if your coworker happens to see you going into a bar. The law is a filter because of the obvious chilling effect: do you really want to risk an inevitable leak where your co-workers will potentially look up info about your porn habits tied to your real name?

> do you really want to risk an inevitable leak where your co-workers will potentially look up info about your porn habits tied to your real name Why would it have your 'habits' tied to it? It's meant to ensure you're over 18 or whatever age - what possible reason would it have to identify individual URLs a particular identity visited?

Without this verification you have high confidence no one can know. After this, you are suddenly trusting companies to do the right thing.

Renting a porn vhs and having the guy photocopy and file your ID is a much bigger deterrant than just having to show your ID to the clerk.

Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#115

Post by alsetmusic »

programbreeding wrote: post #81
stephenr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do you really want to risk an inevitable leak where your co-workers will potentially look up info about your porn habits tied to your real name Why would it have your 'habits' tied to it? It's meant to ensure you're over 18 or whatever age - what possible reason would it have to identify individual URLs a particular identity visited?

>what possible reason would it have to identify individual URLs a particular identity visited? Money. Marketing. Targeted advertising. Etc, etc, etc. Pornhub (and others) are completely free and use more bandwidth than I can wrap my head around. How do you think they pay for that stuff?

> Pornhub (and others) are completely free and use more bandwidth than I can wrap my head around. How do you think they pay for that stuff?

Pornhub sells a subscription service with additional features / content.

Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#116

Post by mcny »

patio11 wrote: post #103
tptacek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are IT shops with large dev teams that don't put proxies between their users and the Internet, but in every one of them that I'm aware of, developer laptops are subject to intrusive continuous monitoring. And, even at firms where there are no proxies, VPNs are problematic. The reason is that large firms are legally obligated to make sure that insiders aren't exfiltrating protected or confidential information.

The reason is that large firms are legally obligated to make sure that insiders aren't exfiltrating protected or confidential information. If it makes people feel better about this, the same countermeasures also help with the case "Adversary pops any laptop in the company via e.g. phishing or malware and then pivots to All The Things." i.e. you don't need to posit non-trust of employees to want to implement continuou…

> If it makes people feel better about this, the same countermeasures also help with the case "Adversary pops any laptop in the company via e.g. phishing or malware and then pivots to All The Things." i.e. you don't need to posit non-trust of employees to want to implement continuous monitoring of work equipment.

Even assuming we don't care about worker privacy and all the stuff, I think we can still do better.

I have no insider information about this (not a Google employee and definitely not associated with the project) but I read some good things about BeyondCorp

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14596613

Regardless of the threat model, "security" has be practical. The main thing business should care about is productivity. I've done subversion checkouts that slow down to a crawl because the malware detection hogs down the disk IO. I've seen "anti-theft" agent go haywire sending a heartbeat too often and making network access unusable.

I haven't had to deal with being denied access to stack overflow and frankly I would take the first offer and quit if I ever had to.

That being said, I think I am OK with random crap running on company owned machines as long as it is reasonable and does not hurt performance. Oh and there should be no expectation that I will take them home with me.

This reminds me of another funny story. One place I worked at, we were not allowed to leave our computers at our desk at the end of the day. We either had to put it in a locked cabinet or take it home with us. Nobody believes me when I tell this story but it is true.

Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#117

Post by krageon »

forapurpose wrote: post #100
cgh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine this service would appeal to people who want to remain anonymous to local law enforcement. Pornhub realises there is a huge untapped market in eg Islamic countries, for example. Regarding the coffee shop thing: I was walking past a place some time back and I saw a woman staring thoughtfully at her laptop. She was sitting with her back to the wall. Behind her was a glass-covered painting, allowing me to see…

> this service would appeal to people who want to remain anonymous to local law enforcement It doesn't make you anonymous at all. It announces: "I'm using Pornhub". > ge untapped market in eg Islamic countries Do you have any evidence of that? What's an 'Islamic country'? Is every country that you've lumped together in this category the same in regard to this issue? Is Islam even one uniform religion? > I guess it's…

It announces "I'm using VPN", nothing more.

It is unclear why you are asking these questions in the first place. What is a "Christian country"? It's a country founded on predominately christian ideals. If you thought about it, I think you can come up with some countries that definitely fall under that category. Do something similar to come to a list of countries that are predominately Muslim. While they obviously will not have identical standpoints, there is at least one that springs to mind instantly when you think "banned pornography". No, it is not one uniform religion, but thankfully that also wasn't the point.

Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#118

Post by bausshf »

Immortalin wrote: post #104
monkeynotes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand how a country can ask a website to comply with its laws if the content is not hosted in that country. I guess it could be asked to comply under threat of being blocked in response to non-compliance. It's such a weird area.

GDPR cough

GDPR is not issued by a country though, but a commission.

Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#119

Post by antihero »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #110
antihero wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What advantages does this have over something like OpenVPN Road Warrior installer? https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install

We covered weaknesses of OpenVPN and strengths of Wireguard in this sub-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17092338

Cheers, I'll set one up!

Re: Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app

#120

Post by antihero »

tptacek wrote: post #34
antihero wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What advantages does this have over something like OpenVPN Road Warrior installer? https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install

It's packaged and maintained by security experts, and doesn't use OpenVPN.

I see a lot of technologies being talked about that I've not heard of - what's the difference between WireGuard and StrongSwan - do they fulfil different purposes?

Or did Algo use StrongSwan and now uses Wireguard?!

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