Glad to see more zero trust confidential computing happening....but keep in mind its still vulnerable to attacks like Battering RAM which can fully breaks cutting-edge Intel SGX and AMD SEV-SNP confidential computing processor security technologies.
Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
191–200 of 456 posts
Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
#192I’m not a big expert on the VPN tech side, but it always seemed to me that the most logical option for those that actually understand about VPN is Proton, or am I missing something here?
The companies to trust are the ones that don’t run ads. I’ve used mullvad for a decade, before that airvpn.
I was a Mullvad user but needed forwarded ports so went back to AirVPN.
No issues so far.
Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
#193Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, I think an ISP cannot inspect the content of packets that are encrypted, say, with HTTPs. In order to inspect TLS encrypted packets you need access to the end-device, controlling the end-router is not sufficient since you would not have access to the device certificates. If you can prove that an ISP can inspect packets, it would be major news.
* Russia * Kazakhstan * China * Belarus * Iran * Mayanmar - list of countries that are known or suspected to MITM traffic, including SSL
how so they supposedly do it?
Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
#195If you’re worried about your VPN provider but you can trust your VPS provider, try an SSH Tunnel. https://joeldare.com/ssh-tunnels-my-vpn-alternative-for-priv...
This is the way: SOCKS5 via SSH
You do need some minimal technical understanding and some scripting.
Pick any cloud provider that can give you a VM with SSH access.
Read up on doing this on your local device or another device on your LAN:
ssh -NT -g -D 10001 -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o ConnectTimeout=5 -i your_ssh_private_key your_cloud_login@any_cloud_provider_ip
Now read up on how your browser points to a SOCKS5 proxy. For Firefox, I create a separate profile. For chromium based, I use the command line.
You are now virtually located to whatever region you chose for your VM.
I mentioned some scripting. It's simple enough that I have a /bin/sh script to spin up the VM, set up the SSH SOCKS5 proxy, launch the browser, then spin the VM down when the browser exits.
Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to work at Tesonet (as software engineer) and I'm not familiar with corporate politics / ownerships but they're lovely people that would 100% walk out if there were some real Russian ties involved. Lithuania is a really small country and IT has been a huge economic strategy since early 00s as a way to become economically independent specifically because of Russia and it worked out really well.
I have a good friend from Lithuania, who has told me so many amazing/wonderful/superlative things about the country he grew up in and loves very dearly, as well as its people. I can't wait to visit someday. Unfortunately, he only has Russian and American citizenship, so he can't purchase real estate there currently, but luckily most of Lithuania's restrictions have been very common-sense (applying only to people who…
I couldn't really get that segue from Lithuania to Estonia. Did you mean to type "Lithuania" in the last paragraph as well?
Here..
> Additionally, I've always been very impressed with Estonia's …
Before that you were talking about Lithuania exclusively.
And then:
> … Estonia's digital infrastructure and Ukrainian software engineering - not just JetBrains …
I think it was founded in CZ and is now HQed in NL. Right?
A typo? Or there's some relation between the two countries and whether JetBrains has some history with these two that is missing here?
(I am not trying to nitpick, really interested in knowing whether there's some angle/twist here, since the post itself is about hidden connections and what not).
Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Idk what's the official status, but it's Tesonet. Some fake debunking in the comments of this thread that is factually almost correct: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn... EDIT: ProtonVPN app was "accidentally" signet by Tesonet. How do you think this could happen?
Proton's response in the thread: Hi everybody, this is Andy here. I'm one of the original researchers from CERN behind ProtonMail and ProtonVPN. There's some false info out there about ProtonVPN, and these stories were first fabricated by Private Internet Access, a competitor who has been feeling pressure from ProtonVPN lately. The stories are false, but we have always been very open with the community, so I would li…
I love Proton’s stuff and use all their products — maybe I’m just being paranoid, but even though the explanation makes sense, I still wonder about those old connections. Would be nice to see more official proofs
Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
#198At this point, the VPN industry is so rife with shady dealings, suspicious ownership structures, weird exits, questionable marketing/PR practices/pushes, and rumours that waters have been muddied sufficiently for every provider out there. It might have been by design as well. Who knows.
I now believe that you know your use case and use VPN only for that, and decide whether you really need to pay with parts of your kidneys for a service that claims to be the "uber privacy bulwark of the season" (until proven otherwise, as it happens), and get done with it, and make sure "anonymity and privacy" are not the expectations unless you have gone to great lengths to ensure these two, and if that's the case, you won't be in the market for "list most private VPNs providers" at a search or LLM input box.
If your needs are anonymity, a VPN is not going to solve it— in fact, relying on one might endanger you. Even for privacy, I'd be very careful in trusting a VPN (any VPN).
So if you need a VPN for streaming content from other geographies, just get the one at the best cost that does the job well in your geography, without going through the rabbit hole of cryptographic verification, reputation spiral, etc.
Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
#199Glad to see more zero trust confidential computing happening....but keep in mind its still vulnerable to attacks like Battering RAM which can fully breaks cutting-edge Intel SGX and AMD SEV-SNP confidential computing processor security technologies.
How is confidential computing applied to VPNs?
Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
#200Can someone explain to me why should I use a VPN when Tor is out there? It just seems to me odd that one would pipe their communications through a private company, that operates over a jurisdiction when said jurisdiction can compel the company in actions that may compromise my anonymity. From my perspective, its like shifting my trust from my ISP (an entity with way more oversight) to a pvt ltd. Isn't Tor as safe as…
> [VPN] shifting my trust from my ISP (an entity with way more oversight) to a pvt ltd
Who do you trust when using Tor?