A while ago I read that there was a potential smear war going on between some of the larger VPN providers. Is there any chance that this is related? (I'd prefer more than just a tweet)
NordVPN confirms it was hacked
11–20 of 666 posts
Re: NordVPN confirms it was hacked
#12If you care less about the pseudo-anonymous-but-not-really shared-IP aspect of using a VPN, and care more about the this-lan-is-sketchy use case, I have had good experiences with Algo [0]. You can just paste in an API key and spin up your own VPN on something like DigitalOcean. And it uses WireGuard!
Re: NordVPN confirms it was hacked
#13NordVPN is being recommended a lot to people who don't know better by influencers on social media, especially on YouTube. This kind of endorsement is recklessly negligent and needs to stop. https://drewdevault.com/2019/04/19/Your-VPN-is-a-serious-cho... Edit: note that I don't blame these influencers for their ignorance on the risks of using a VPN; rather I blame the shady VPN providers for overselling the security v…
I'm pretty sure they're "recommending" it because they're getting paid for it - it's a sponsor segment. After demonetization became common YouTubers looked for other sources of revenue and there are rather few companies that try to contact them directly for ads, so you see them appear over and over again.
Re: NordVPN confirms it was hacked
#14NordVPN is being recommended a lot to people who don't know better by influencers on social media, especially on YouTube. This kind of endorsement is recklessly negligent and needs to stop. https://drewdevault.com/2019/04/19/Your-VPN-is-a-serious-cho... Edit: note that I don't blame these influencers for their ignorance on the risks of using a VPN; rather I blame the shady VPN providers for overselling the security v…
I have a non technical friend who did this citing CNET. It felt like kind of a shit thing based on how it was being advertised, but I couldn’t actually see anything that warranted saying nord was bad.
How would have expressed this in laymen terms (before this compromised thing was revealed obviously)?
Re: NordVPN confirms it was hacked
#15Someone is probably going to ask what other HN users recommend as an alternative. Personally, I use Private Internet Access because they're the only provider I've found with a track record of demonstrably not being able to turn your records over to someone asking for them [1]. [1] https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-no-logging-...
EDIT: I said I used IPVanish mostly because the EFF endorsed them, but someone pointed out below they got caught logging. I suppose that would explain why they're not endorsed on the EFF VPN page anymore. So, I guess time to find a new VPN. :(
Re: NordVPN confirms it was hacked
#16Someone is probably going to ask what other HN users recommend as an alternative. Personally, I use Private Internet Access because they're the only provider I've found with a track record of demonstrably not being able to turn your records over to someone asking for them [1]. [1] https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-no-logging-...
Perfect Privacy is pretty good too.
Re: NordVPN confirms it was hacked
#17NordVPN is being recommended a lot to people who don't know better by influencers on social media, especially on YouTube. This kind of endorsement is recklessly negligent and needs to stop. https://drewdevault.com/2019/04/19/Your-VPN-is-a-serious-cho... Edit: note that I don't blame these influencers for their ignorance on the risks of using a VPN; rather I blame the shady VPN providers for overselling the security v…
I have a non technical friend who did this citing CNET. It felt like kind of a shit thing based on how it was being advertised, but I couldn’t actually see anything that warranted saying nord was bad. How would have expressed this in laymen terms (before this compromised thing was revealed obviously)?
My layman explanation is:
You have to take your choice of VPN seriously. When you use a VPN, they can read all of your internet traffic, so choose a company you can trust with that information. If they screw up, like NordVPN did, then anyone can read all of your internet traffic even when you think you're safe. You're often better off without a VPN than with one.
Re: NordVPN confirms it was hacked
#18Someone is probably going to ask what other HN users recommend as an alternative. Personally, I use Private Internet Access because they're the only provider I've found with a track record of demonstrably not being able to turn your records over to someone asking for them [1]. [1] https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-no-logging-...
The thing is, almost all of these providers share infrastructure and IP blocks. Lookup MicFo and the associated lawsuits (not even including their lawsuit with arin). They provided the exact same IP blocked systems to dozens of the top VPN providers.
The reality is, if someone else owns the infrastructure you're just pushing the risk to a different location.
Re: NordVPN confirms it was hacked
#19It's odd that NordVPN, VikingVPN and Torguard all got their private keys leaked here. - Did the hackers use an SSH or a VPN service vulnerability? - Or maybe even a previously unknown vulnerability? - Was SSH access firewalled? If not, why? - Do they still have root access?
A lot of them shared physical infrastructure definitely less odd that multiple were breached at same time.
Re: NordVPN confirms it was hacked
#20Someone is probably going to ask what other HN users recommend as an alternative. Personally, I use Private Internet Access because they're the only provider I've found with a track record of demonstrably not being able to turn your records over to someone asking for them [1]. [1] https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-no-logging-...
EDIT : I said I used IPVanish mostly because the EFF endorsed them, but someone pointed out below they got caught logging. I suppose that would explain why they're not endorsed on the EFF VPN page anymore. So, I guess time to find a new VPN. :(
IPVanish was caught logging while claiming they didn’t log [1].
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/ipvanish-no-logging-vpn-led-homelan...