Pretty interesting. Would love to see if users can choose their own servers as the underlying identity pool.
PS: SPN: Safing Privacy Network, https://github.com/safing/spn
Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
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Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
#32What's SPN?
I found a blog post (https://safing.io/blog/2022/09/06/spn-vs-vpns/), but you have to go fairly far down the page (to the header "Cryptographic Identity Protection") to begin to get the gist of what it is.
"This was originally invented for Tor and is called Onion Routing. This way, every server in the chain only knows the previous and the next hop. No server ever knows who you are AND where you are going to."
"As VPNs are centralized, all their servers are operated by only one entity - the VPN provider itself. They can, therefore, monitor all you traffic and see what you are up to. This is why they tout their “No Logging” policies so loudly, because they know they can see everything."
"SPN on the other hand invites the community to join the network and strengthen it by adding diversity to the operators of the network. This way - in addition to the cryptographic protections - it is made almost impossible that anyone will ever be able to track you through the SPN."
It sounds like it is a next-gen VPN service which addresses the shortcomings of the current VPN services by splitting the service into relays and exits, each with limited knowledge and each potentially operated by different parties.
Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
#33Are there any plans for a Mac version? Pretty cool that both Windows and Linux both are supported and already exist. Keep up the good work! I also appreciate the easy to read and clear privacy policy about what telemetry and data this SaSS platform collects and how it is handled. https://safing.io/privacy/#article-1-where-we-collect-datapi...
For macOS I can strongly recommend Little Snitch. It's not open source, but I like that it's not subscription software and doesn't collect personal data. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html
I've been running LuLu and it works great.
Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is “not subscription software” necessarily a good thing? Don’t you want to be the customer rather than the product?
Little Snitch still costs money, it's just a different licensing model. It's not SaSS, so only a one-time fee to purchase for the tool. The reason I'm open to paying a monthly fee for a SaSS offering is to keep getting new features and timely security updates, and support ensuring the recurring expense aspects of the service can stay alive. It's not entirely clear to me yet why PortMaster needs to be a SaSS, but it's…
> The reason I'm open to paying a monthly fee for a SaSS offering…
To clarify, I'm absolutely not subscription shaming, and I understand that startups are effectively forced to use a SaaS model in order to attract investors.
Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
For macOS I can strongly recommend Little Snitch. It's not open source, but I like that it's not subscription software and doesn't collect personal data. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html
I've been running LuLu and it works great. https://objective-see.org/products/lulu.html
I love everything Objective-See makes too. Glad you mentioned them!
Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
#36Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
#37Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
#38What's SPN?
I found a blog post ( https://safing.io/blog/2022/09/06/spn-vs-vpns/ ), but you have to go fairly far down the page (to the header "Cryptographic Identity Protection") to begin to get the gist of what it is. "This was originally invented for Tor and is called Onion Routing. This way, every server in the chain only knows the previous and the next hop. No server ever knows who you are AND where you are going to." "As V…
CTO of Safing here.
Came back to answer the question and you beat me to it! Thanks!
SPN (Safing Privacy Network) aims to fill the area between VPNs and Tor. VPNs provide very little real privacy and Tor is (outside Tor Browser) very difficult to setup and configure.
With the combination with the Portmaster (which is also firewall), we provide superior privacy to any VPN and offer a 1-click install for a software that you cannot mis-configure.
If you have any questions, please ask!
Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
#39Is this a per device client? Is it possible to say, run it on Ubuntu as a server and have it handle the whole LAN?
This is client software. Everything is done locally.
Except of course for the SPN, which has a growing network of servers to relay traffic.
Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall
#40Been looking for something like this for my windows computer. Little Snitch has been invaluable over the years but never found anything that covers it’s features for windows
If you are looking for a simple and light firewall (but still better than Windows Firewall), I recommend using Simplewall. It does not require a kernel extension and works with the API provided by Windows to do network filtering. https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall
We have a blog post about this, if anyone is curious:
https://safing.io/blog/2022/04/11/portmaster-vs-simplewall/