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A privacy VPN you can verify

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Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#141

Post by greyface- »

rasengan wrote: post #38
do_not_redeem wrote: post #18

> Build the code we published, get the fingerprint it produces, ask a VP.NET server for the fingerprint it reports, and compare the two. If they match, the server is running the exact code you inspected. No trust required. Okay, maybe I'm being thick, but... when I get a response from your server, how do I know it's actually running inside the enclave, and not an ordinary process sending a hardcoded expected fingerpr…

> how do I know it's actually running inside the enclave, and not an ordinary process sending a hardcoded expected fingerprint? It's signed by Intel and thus, guaranteed to come from the enclave!

An Intel signature does not guarantee that it came from the enclave. It guarantees that it came from something blessed by Intel. To conclude that it must have come from an unmodified enclave requires trust in Intel and the integrity of their signing process. This is inconsistent with "no trust required".

What if, for example, a three-letter agency seized keys from Intel, served them with a gag order to prohibit disclosure of the seizure, put themselves in the middle of the network path between you and the user, and modified the server software to send falsified signatures derived from those seized keys?

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#142

Post by jiveturkey »

This is hot garbage IMO. Admittedly I haven't looked past the intro page, and comments here. Plus I have a ton of experience in this area (although have never actually operated a consumer VPN or ToR or what have you).

I think the comments here about SGX trust are misguided. This isn't protecting you from deep state chip level intentional bypasses. We can at least have reasonable enough assurance in SGX per se. The average law enforcement isn't going to get to your data because of some undisclosed SGX issue.

But unlike AMZ Nitro, which AIUI has a network stack which bypasses the guest OS (I believe hypervisor can see everything, which I would trust about the same as SGX), SGX requires host/guest support to pass network packets. So in Nitro you can operate the TCB entirely without (unverified, unattested) guest OS seeing anything? But in SGX the guest has to pass traffic back and forth to SGX. The difference here is who operates the untrusted bit. For SGX it's the application author themselves.

That is why you need the 10ms batching, to stop the host/guest from matching src/dst pairs, and inspecting the outbound traffic (inbound is presumably encrypted for the TEE). However, batching is laughable and won't stop correlation (unless you inject significant fake traffic, which the host/guest has to not be able to tell is fake).

So like every other VPN this is marketing of snake oil.

Compare that to express or whoever it is that offers static IP within Nitro. That is way more useful than this pretend security. (Use of Nitro allows them to not know what static IP is assigned to you, so they can't be compelled to give that info up.)

MASQUE (Apple Private Relay) or other double-blind VPNs are better and don't require SGX.

Besides the technical inadequacies, you have the double whammy of PIA and MtGox heritage. oh my.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#143

Post by patrakov »

MagicalTux wrote: post #37
remram wrote: post #16

What does the verifiable program do though? With a VPN, what I'm concerned about is my traffic not being sniffed and analyzed. This code seem to have something to do with keys but it's not clear how that helps...?

This is the server-side part of things. It receives encrypted traffic from your (and other customers) device, and routes it to the Internet. This guarantees that your traffic isn't being linked to you, and is mixed up with others in a way that makes it difficult for someone to attribute it to you, as long as you also protect yourself on the application side (clear cookies, no tracking browser extension, etc)

No. The verifiable part receives an already-decrypted copy of your traffic and mixes it with everyone else's traffic. Source: https://vp.net/l/en-US/technical#:~:text=cryptographic%20dat...

I have not inspected whether the procedure suggested for verifying the enclave contents is correct. It's irrelevant if you need to prove that the decrypted traffic, while still being associated with your identity, goes ONLY into the enclave and is not sent to, let's say, KGB via a separate channel.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#144

Post by jiveturkey »

dguido wrote: post #70

This is cool, and I'm glad to see someone doing this, but I also feel obligated to mention that you can also just quickly deploy your own VPN server that only you have access to with AlgoVPN: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

Where are you gonna deploy it? The ingress and egress IP will lead back to you.

Also unless you are running on a fully trusted stack (TPM or other attestation), you don't in fact know that only you have access. This is hard. `Quickly` isn't a thing.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#145

Post by jiveturkey »

john01dav wrote: post #20

One of the main use cases of a VPN is against governments, but a government making Intel compromise SGX is plausible given what we know from Snowden.

Well, if by against governments you mean against enforcement of regional IP protection then yes. The major use case of VPN is geo projection and torrenting, not high falutin' privacy the good guys depend on. The 2nd major use case is avoiding crypto KYC.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#146

Post by jiveturkey »

gmlenovo22 wrote: post #54

I don't buy this. They could run one secure enclave runningng the legit version of code and one insecure hardware running insecure software. Then they put a load balancer in front of both. When people ask for the attestation the LB sends traffic to the secure enclave, so you get the attestation back and all seems good. When people send vpn traffic the loadbalancer sends them to the insecure hardware with insecure sof…

While there are many ways to subvert this, that isn't one of them. Only the attested software can decrypt the traffic you send.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#147

Post by exfil »

jcgl wrote: post #135
exfil wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But your cash gets attributed by your origin IP address. Which you pay with your identity available.

No? You put in a/your randomly generated account number for attribution.

Where you connect to your "cash obtained" VPN? That IP has your name on it.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#148

Post by Jackson__ »

neurostimulant wrote: post #129
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who were convicted of multi-million dollar fraud resulting in someone walking away with millions of dollars of others bitcoin deposits, IIRC ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Karpel%C3%A8s if you want to check details). Also, I couldn't see where it is based? Anywhere in Five-Eyes countries, or places like USA with national security letters (or just their fascist government) is probably not going to f…

> why would we hide in shady jurisdictions… if we've got nothing to hide? > we operate proudly in the united states. protected by the constitution — not offshore shell games. > no backdoors. no stored data. even if they ask, we've got nothing. > we don't dodge the law — we built tech that doesn't need to. https://vp.net/l/en-US/about

Holy slop-dogged chatgpt output. Including all the other AI-generated assets on their site, is any human even involved in this product?

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#149

Post by pbhjpbhj »

neurostimulant wrote: post #129
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who were convicted of multi-million dollar fraud resulting in someone walking away with millions of dollars of others bitcoin deposits, IIRC ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Karpel%C3%A8s if you want to check details). Also, I couldn't see where it is based? Anywhere in Five-Eyes countries, or places like USA with national security letters (or just their fascist government) is probably not going to f…

> why would we hide in shady jurisdictions… if we've got nothing to hide? > we operate proudly in the united states. protected by the constitution — not offshore shell games. > no backdoors. no stored data. even if they ask, we've got nothing. > we don't dodge the law — we built tech that doesn't need to. https://vp.net/l/en-US/about

>protected by the constitution

Surely, they couldn't say that with a straight face under the current regime.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#150

Post by jcgl »

exfil wrote: post #147
jcgl wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? You put in a/your randomly generated account number for attribution.

Where you connect to your "cash obtained" VPN? That IP has your name on it.

That’s a totally different problem than what you were saying before. This problem is one inherent to VPN technology writ large.
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