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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

#21

Post by dylan604 »

flkenosad wrote: post #17
manishsharan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and then suppose you login to that VPN and are looking up children's sweaters for your kids and keep the session on .. while law enforcement is looking up the ip address associated with the earlier activity which is now assigned to you . Good luck explaining to the the cops about VPNs and IP addresses. This is my fear.

You don't have to explain anything to cops. You explain it to lawyers and judges.

You actually shouldn't even say anything to the cops. If they show up with a warrant for arrest as well as search, you're going to jail no matter what you say. If they show up with just a search warrant, they are going to take whatever they want to take whether its outside the purview of the warrant or not. It will be up to a lawyer to convince a judge it was out of scope at a later date after it has already been taken. You will never convince a team of cops that their warrant is wrong when they show up. The only chance you have is if you're uber criminal and have your attorney present when they arrive.

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

#22

Post by throwmeaway2232 »

dylan604 wrote: post #18
kwanbix wrote: post #8

One thing that I always wondered from VPNs. Let's say a pedophile uses Mullvad to get forbidden images, isn't the VPN liable? I mean, the law enforcement will see that the IP was from Mullvad's office, so I assume they are the ones doing it? How do they avoid this? It is a real doubt. Maybe stupid, but real.

All this would do would be to lead the investigation to get a warrant/subpoena to have the VPN service provide user details about the account and anything else relevant like logs. This is where the "we don't log shit" bullet points comes into play as well as running only from RAM. If the warrant allows for removal of hardware, all data is lost once power is removed. LEOs would have to bring lots of batteries.

or liquid nitrogen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack

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

#23

Post by nwellnhof »

kwanbix wrote: post #15
jameskilton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that this generally falls under Section 230, as you can make the same argument about Comcast, AT&T, et.al. who lets the bytes go over their infrastructure.

But the difference is that Comcast, AT&T, et.al can say, jameskilton was using this IP. The VPN is saying, I don't know.

That's only a problem if the VPN is in a jurisdiction with data retention laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention

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

#24

Post by Brian_K_White »

densh wrote: post #10
dangus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no disk in the servers, so there is no chance for user information to persist anywhere. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a performance benefit, since RAM is far faster than any permanent storage. The cons are probably just that this is a pretty unusual architecture that they probably had to put some work into setting up and making it reliable.

You can still mount a remote networked file system to a dikless node. Lack of disks does not guarantee inability to persist data.

If only the system were open source so you wouldn't have to wonder about that...

But we do still have to trust that they are actually running the code they posted.

Unless that code somehow contains some way to verify itself?

I wonder if there is some way to do that? Have the code include a hash of itself and some way to query the running service that guarantees that the running service must be running the code you are looking at?

At first glance it seems any response could always be faked, but maybe there is some cryptography trick where you submit something, like an encrypted copy of the public code maybe, and it crunches and returns something, and that somehow proves that the running code you can't see must be the same as the code you can see.

Depending on how the protocol for the challenge works, that could still be faked. The challenge has to somehow not be seperable from ordinary traffic so that you can't have one piece of code handle the challenge and another piece of code handle other traffic.

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

#25

Post by nerdbert »

throwmeaway2232 wrote: post #22
dylan604 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this would do would be to lead the investigation to get a warrant/subpoena to have the VPN service provide user details about the account and anything else relevant like logs. This is where the "we don't log shit" bullet points comes into play as well as running only from RAM. If the warrant allows for removal of hardware, all data is lost once power is removed. LEOs would have to bring lots of batteries.

or liquid nitrogen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack

They're going to freeze the whole data center? It's rack after rack of machines that the traffic could have passed through, right? And if they're not logging IPs to RAM then they only have a fraction of a second to get the right one before the register is overwritten with the next user's info.

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

#26

Post by sumtechguy »

thathndude wrote: post #7
dangus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no disk in the servers, so there is no chance for user information to persist anywhere. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a performance benefit, since RAM is far faster than any permanent storage. The cons are probably just that this is a pretty unusual architecture that they probably had to put some work into setting up and making it reliable.

Technically, researchers have proven that you can shutdown a machine, hit the RAM with a cold spray (like liquid nitrogen) and keep the bits "alive" long enough to dump them for analysis. But, obviously, that's pretty insane. Agree with everything that this is a big leap in the step of better protection for users.

The likelihood of them showing and doing that is low. However, the likelihood of them showing up with a set of USB drives and just running rsync/cp/dd is higher.

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

#27

Post by c22 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #24
densh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still mount a remote networked file system to a dikless node. Lack of disks does not guarantee inability to persist data.

If only the system were open source so you wouldn't have to wonder about that... But we do still have to trust that they are actually running the code they posted. Unless that code somehow contains some way to verify itself? I wonder if there is some way to do that? Have the code include a hash of itself and some way to query the running service that guarantees that the running service must be running the code you ar…

Homomorphic encryption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption

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

#28

Post by HPsquared »

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".

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

#29

Post by dspillett »

flkenosad wrote: post #17
manishsharan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and then suppose you login to that VPN and are looking up children's sweaters for your kids and keep the session on .. while law enforcement is looking up the ip address associated with the earlier activity which is now assigned to you . Good luck explaining to the the cops about VPNs and IP addresses. This is my fear.

You don't have to explain anything to cops. You explain it to lawyers and judges.

And the court of public opinion. By the time lawyers and judges are involved, unless you are very lucky, your name and photo is all over the tabloids. Any retractions published when you are later found completely innocent will be the equivalent of a column inch or two on page 17.

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

#30

Post by flanfly »

INTPenis wrote: post #2

This is really cool, you'd expect any VPN provider that cares about security and transparency to act like Mullvad. Some pour thousands of dollars into forcing influencers to say they care about security, while others focus on actually improving security. And it's all open source btw. https://github.com/system-transparency/stboot

The work on stboot and it's supporting components, including documentation was moved to it's own Gitlab: https://git.glasklar.is/system-transparency/core/stboot
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