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A privacy VPN you can verify

vp.net

21–30 of 160 posts

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#22
post #14

Intel SGX/remote attestation for verifying that servers are running the code they say they are running is very interesting, I believe Signal talked about doing something similar for contact discovery, but at a base level it requires a lot of trust. How do I verify that the attestation I receive back is the one of the machine I am contacting? Can I know for sure that this isn't a compromised SGX configuration, since t…

Intel will not attest insecure configurations. Our client will automatically verify the attestation it receives to make sure the certificate isn't expired and has a proper signature under Intel's CA trust.

A lot of people have been attempting to attack SGX, and while there have been some successful attacks these have been addressed by Intel and resolved. Intel will not attest any insecure configuration as do other TEE vendors (AMD SEV, ARM Trustzone, etc).

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#23
They claim to allow anonymous sign up and payments, but requires an email,an account, zip code and name for Crypto payments, but fake info could be used I guess. I tried ordering via Crypto, but it constantly gives me this error: "Unable to load order information. Try again".

Honestly, I feel more comfortable using Mullvad. This team has some folks with questionable backgrounds and I wouldn't trust Intel. Also VPN providers are usually in non-us countries due to things like the Lavabit, Yahoo incidents and the Snowden revelations.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks neat, but how can you tell the fingerprint the server returns was actually generated by the enclave server, and isn't just a hardcoded response to match the expected signature of the published code (or that you're not talking to compromised box that's simply proxying over a signature from a legit, uncompromised SGX container)?

The enclave fingerprint is generated as part of the attestation. The way this works is the enclave on launch generates a ECDSA key (which only exists inside the enclave and is never stored or transmitted outside). It then passes it to SGX for attestation. SGX generates a payload (the attestation) which itself contains the enclave measured hash (MRENCLAVE) and other details about the CPU (microcode, BIOS, etc). The wh…

> the connection is guaranteed to be with a host running the software in question

a host... not necessarily the one actually serving your request at the moment, and doesn't prove that it's the only machine touching that data. And afaik this only proves the data in the enclave matches a key, and has nothing to do with "connections".

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#26
post #14

Intel SGX/remote attestation for verifying that servers are running the code they say they are running is very interesting, I believe Signal talked about doing something similar for contact discovery, but at a base level it requires a lot of trust. How do I verify that the attestation I receive back is the one of the machine I am contacting? Can I know for sure that this isn't a compromised SGX configuration, since t…

Intel will not attest insecure configurations. Our client will automatically verify the attestation it receives to make sure the certificate isn't expired and has a proper signature under Intel's CA trust. A lot of people have been attempting to attack SGX, and while there have been some successful attacks these have been addressed by Intel and resolved. Intel will not attest any insecure configuration as do other TE…

I really am interested in how this works. How can the client software verify that the SGX attestation actually is from the same machine as the VPN connection? I guess there's probably an answer here, but I don't know enough about SGX.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#27
post #14

Intel SGX/remote attestation for verifying that servers are running the code they say they are running is very interesting, I believe Signal talked about doing something similar for contact discovery, but at a base level it requires a lot of trust. How do I verify that the attestation I receive back is the one of the machine I am contacting? Can I know for sure that this isn't a compromised SGX configuration, since t…

> Can I know for sure that this isn't a compromised SGX configuration, since the system has been broken in the past?

As far as I'm aware, no. Any network protocol can be spoofed, with varying degrees of difficulty.

I would love to be wrong.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#28

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.

The US government might be able to pressure Intel into doing something with SGX, but there are way too many eyes on this for it to go unnoticed in my opinion, especially considering SGX has been around for so long and messed with by so many security researchers.

The US government also likely learned a lesson from early attempts at backdoors (RSA, etc) that this kind of things do not stay hidden and do not reflect well.

We've thought about this long and hard and planning to mitigate this as much as possible. Meanwhile we still offer something that is a huge step forward compared to what is standard in the industry.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#29
These VPN's for privacy are so bad. You give your credit card (verified identity), default gateway and payload to foreign soil and feel safe. On top of that your packets clear text metadata verifies you with cryptographic accuracy.

In today's internet you just cannot have exit IP which is not tied either into your identity, payment information or physical location. And don't even mention TOR, pls.

Re: A privacy VPN you can verify

#30
post #27
post #14

Intel SGX/remote attestation for verifying that servers are running the code they say they are running is very interesting, I believe Signal talked about doing something similar for contact discovery, but at a base level it requires a lot of trust. How do I verify that the attestation I receive back is the one of the machine I am contacting? Can I know for sure that this isn't a compromised SGX configuration, since t…

> Can I know for sure that this isn't a compromised SGX configuration, since the system has been broken in the past? As far as I'm aware, no. Any network protocol can be spoofed, with varying degrees of difficulty. I would love to be wrong.

Intel audits configuration on system launch and verifies it runs something they know safe. That involves CPU, CPU microcode, BIOS version and a few other things (SGX may not work if you don't have the right RAM for example).

The final signature comes in the form of a x509 cerificate signed with ECDSA.

What's more important to me is that SGX still has a lot of security researchers attempting (and currently failing) to break it further.

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