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We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

mullvad.net

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Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#161

Post by thayne »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #135
hamburglar wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d agree with you about HTTPS providing most of the benefit that VPN advertising focuses on if I hadn’t seen repeated direct evidence that even most technical users will blithely click through HTTPS errors’ “accept the risk” bypass. It’s as if knowledgeable users think “sure, this could be a man in the middle attack, but it’s most likely just a benign cert problem, because certs are hard.” Sigh.

>if I hadn’t seen repeated direct evidence that even most technical users will blithely click through HTTPS errors’ “accept the risk” bypass As far as I recall this is not possible on Chrome if you are MITM'd. If the cert presented doesn't match the cert in the HSTS cache, there is no option to bypass. If the server's cert is expired, then you do indeed see the option, but an expired certificate doesn't necessarily m…

It is possible to bypass. Just more difficult.

Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#162

Post by Nevermark »

mainpassathome wrote: post #156
tredre3 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you just describing Tor?

yes but it has le heckin crypto

Hmm. You left out the most important bit!

Some kind of economics are needed to over come the fact that there are only a few thousand Tor nodes [0], making it relatively easy to compromise the network by any entity willing to pay for a couple of thousand nodes [1], which is a bargain for any intelligence service.

I.e. Tor is pretty safe, but because it’s volunteer, it is also a bit of a honeypot.

Now take all the money people spend on commercial VPN’s, and anonymize accounts while making some privacy first crypto actually useful to the general public.

Millions of nodes, or tens of millions.

The benefits come not just from linear node path anonymity.

By spreading traffic packets in parallel across different paths, and geographically, so it’s near impossible to track anything useful even with a lot of compromised nodes.

Assuming you have a LOT of nodes.

(Geography here meaning Internet topology, verified by minimal latency.

Topological information for millions of nodes will help keep latency low, while increasing the number of nodes in each path, for a better security vs. latency trade off.

So nodes could be incentivized to locate and scale based on topology & usage.)

If there is a way to make Tor anywhere near that secure a lot of people would like to know how.

Economics matter, and this money is being spent already.

[0] https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html

[1] https://www.makeuseof.com/tor-exit-nodes-spying/#:~:text=A%2....

Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#163

Post by powersnail »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #160
powersnail wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s kinda my point. A canary removes all the middle ground between a yes and no. Which means no comment = yes. The parent comment implies that in such a case “no comment” is not compliant with the law, as it informs the inquirer. Hence the only way to comply is to answer “no”, which is a lie.

Except "no comment" is not a yes. It's a "whether we do or don't, you are not part of that process and not privy to that information either way".

The point of the canary, is to turn any non-answer into a practical, or at least a tentative, "yes". If you no longer see an explicit "no", it means "yes".

Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#164

Post by powersnail »

NegativeK wrote: post #149
powersnail wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when someone asks you whether you have received a court order of some kind? Are you compelled by court to lie about it?

I'd hire a lawyer that knows how to deal with them and knows how to say no comment. I've always felt that the warrant canary is a nerd's gotcha designed to get out of a sketchy legal process (NSLs) and that judges would be very unsympathetic. But IANAL.

At least from my perspective, it is not just a "gotcha" problem or whatever feelings it conjures up in a judge's mind.

When a company, who already has a canary in place, receives this kind of warrants, what _can_ the company practically do to comply with non-disclosure? It seems that lying is now the only option left, if the company must explicitly post a "no, we didn't receive such a warrant".

Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#165

Post by fomine3 »

infofarmer wrote: post #103

Not to provoke predictable responses, but I find it interesting that the tech-talented VPN providers are not using BSD in favor of Linux, especially with requirements like diskless operation, kernel customization, and tighter security.

Is any BSD superior for such use cases?

Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#166

Post by ehhthing »

vinay_ys wrote: post #89
HPsquared wrote: post #28

I wonder about those VPNs that say "we don't log or store anything". That may be the case, but they probably just send a continuous stream of data to the law enforcement / intelligence services or whoever instead of storing it themselves. They can then correctly say "WE don't log".

Even with an honest company, the pressures on them are twofold – security and legal. Their systems can be compromised through security vulnerabilities and social engineering (including coercion – money, ideology, compromise, ego – classic psyops playbook). Or they can get legal government orders - which pretty much every government in the world have laws on books and operational practices to force any actor to hand-o…

You know at that point why not just hack Level3, Cogent, Telia, Zayo or some other T1 provider?

Frankly VPNs don't protect you from anything other than the most monitoring systems and the occasional public wifi connection. They're really just glorified Netflix region proxies and nothing more to most people

Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#167

Post by infofarmer »

latchkey wrote: post #116
infofarmer wrote: post #103

Not to provoke predictable responses, but I find it interesting that the tech-talented VPN providers are not using BSD in favor of Linux, especially with requirements like diskless operation, kernel customization, and tighter security.

For me, the pool of people to hire that know Linux inside and out would be much larger. This is worth any perceived security issues. In terms of diskless, I've run 25k+ iPXE deployments on diskless blade servers using a highly customized Ubuntu, and it was fantastic. Regardless of OS choice, being diskless is also quite nice... if there was a security issue or you need an upgrade of some sort, you just reboot. Only t…

Not sure the actual authors of the various overlapping Linux network subsystems even know the comprehensive picture "inside and out" for chronic lack of consistent documentation.

Last time I managed a small «supercomputer», 50x IBM blades running Suse, it wouldn't support PXE/NFS without kernel customization, but that would void support contracts and finicky third-party software. Made a switch to FreeBSD, where everything worked out of the box one hour later. That was over 15 years ago, I have no idea how much the situation changed.

Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#168

Post by infofarmer »

fomine3 wrote: post #165
infofarmer wrote: post #103

Not to provoke predictable responses, but I find it interesting that the tech-talented VPN providers are not using BSD in favor of Linux, especially with requirements like diskless operation, kernel customization, and tighter security.

Is any BSD superior for such use cases?

Any of the three major branches are the first choice for lean, bespoke network appliances. For Mullvad in particular OpenBSD or FreeBSD would be the obvious choice.

Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#169

Post by dspillett »

WendyTheWillow wrote: post #140
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until it happens to you.

No, even if it happened to me it would not be relevant for the vast majority.

The point is that it could happen to anyone, if their choice of connectivity arrangements make it possible, so it is a relevant concern for everyone when planning such connectivity arrangements (whether or not they care about the implications of it potentially happening to you, me, or anyone else).

Re: We have successfully completed our migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure

#170

Post by ckdarby »

latchkey wrote: post #116
infofarmer wrote: post #103

Not to provoke predictable responses, but I find it interesting that the tech-talented VPN providers are not using BSD in favor of Linux, especially with requirements like diskless operation, kernel customization, and tighter security.

For me, the pool of people to hire that know Linux inside and out would be much larger. This is worth any perceived security issues. In terms of diskless, I've run 25k+ iPXE deployments on diskless blade servers using a highly customized Ubuntu, and it was fantastic. Regardless of OS choice, being diskless is also quite nice... if there was a security issue or you need an upgrade of some sort, you just reboot. Only t…

I guess that is some of their focus around why they got their image down to 200MB.

Even better if you had boxes with 10 gigE and the smaller image. Would take your times down from like 6-10 hours to 1.5 hours.

Also, I doubt a full 25k restart all at once you probably had underlying applications that expected rolling, blue/green or even % or nodes that can go offline at once.

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