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VPN Encryption

privateinternetaccess.com

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Re: VPN Encryption

#31

Post by duaneb »

IvyMike wrote: post #24
r0h1n wrote: post #4

I've been a happy PIA subscriber since the Snowden controversy. However every time I see them becoming more popular (at least 4 of my friends have signed up with them in the past few weeks) and earnestly trying to make themselves more secure, I also realize that someone, somewhere within the NSA (and yes, other intelligence agencies around the world) is elevating them on a list of VPNs to break.

I've said this before, but PIA and other similar VPN providers are great security against most drive-by hackers. I am a happy customer for this reason. But if your threat model includes "NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA", you are going to have to spend more than $4 a month to remain secure.

Yes. In fact, I'm not aware of a failsafe method to guard against digital surveillance at any price save not using computers.

Re: VPN Encryption

#32

Post by canttestthis »

IvyMike wrote: post #24
r0h1n wrote: post #4

I've been a happy PIA subscriber since the Snowden controversy. However every time I see them becoming more popular (at least 4 of my friends have signed up with them in the past few weeks) and earnestly trying to make themselves more secure, I also realize that someone, somewhere within the NSA (and yes, other intelligence agencies around the world) is elevating them on a list of VPNs to break.

I've said this before, but PIA and other similar VPN providers are great security against most drive-by hackers. I am a happy customer for this reason. But if your threat model includes "NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA", you are going to have to spend more than $4 a month to remain secure.

Okay, I'll bite. My budget is more than $4 a month, but not thousands. Is there any way to keep myself secure from the NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA/etc in a simple VPN-way?

Re: VPN Encryption

#33

Post by coderrr »

jevinskie wrote: post #10
coderrr wrote: post #3

FYI, this is the info page for our new (beta) OpenVPN based client which supports multiple encryption options: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/index.php?p=/dis...

I love PIA but I was too afraid to use it at Black Hat / DEFCON this year. If you use L2TP (required for iOS, handy for OS X because there is a native client) there is no certificate to prevent a MITM. Is there any way to address this? Can you use a certificate instead of a pre-shared key?

Here is a way some of our customers are using OpenVPN on iOS:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/index.php?p=/dis...

Re: VPN Encryption

#34

Post by chriscareycode »

pilif wrote: post #15
jevinskie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love PIA but I was too afraid to use it at Black Hat / DEFCON this year. If you use L2TP (required for iOS, handy for OS X because there is a native client) there is no certificate to prevent a MITM. Is there any way to address this? Can you use a certificate instead of a pre-shared key?

nitpick: There is a native OpenVPN client for iOS in the AppStore. I don't know how they managed to, but it's plugging into the native iOS VPN functionality and it works perfectly well.

To my knowledge, there are 7 companies including OpenVPN who have been granted access to private VPN APIs. I personally use the OpenVPN iOS client for "always-on" phone VPN.

Re: VPN Encryption

#35

Post by sliverstorm »

duaneb wrote: post #31
IvyMike wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said this before, but PIA and other similar VPN providers are great security against most drive-by hackers. I am a happy customer for this reason. But if your threat model includes "NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA", you are going to have to spend more than $4 a month to remain secure.

Yes. In fact, I'm not aware of a failsafe method to guard against digital surveillance at any price save not using computers.

"Failsafe" is unnecessary. Come on, we call ourselves engineers here, right? A cardinal rule of engineering is to not let "perfect" get in the way of "good enough".

Re: VPN Encryption

#36

Post by duaneb »

sliverstorm wrote: post #35
duaneb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. In fact, I'm not aware of a failsafe method to guard against digital surveillance at any price save not using computers.

"Failsafe" is unnecessary. Come on, we call ourselves engineers here, right? A cardinal rule of engineering is to not let "perfect" get in the way of "good enough".

Yes. I perhaps should have said that price for granted security scales exponentially.

Re: VPN Encryption

#38

Post by goatforce5 »

r0h1n wrote: post #13
sixothree wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't their business location in the US negate the need to be cracked?

They don't store any user logs (I have no reason to suspect they'd lie about that). So there's not much stored data to break. Which means the focus will be on breaking their traffic encryption protocols.

Hypothetically, I believe a US entity could be forced to start logging and simultaneously be forced to not mention that logging had been turned on (and, indeed, to lie if asked about it).

Re: VPN Encryption

#39

Post by r0h1n »

IvyMike wrote: post #24
r0h1n wrote: post #4

I've been a happy PIA subscriber since the Snowden controversy. However every time I see them becoming more popular (at least 4 of my friends have signed up with them in the past few weeks) and earnestly trying to make themselves more secure, I also realize that someone, somewhere within the NSA (and yes, other intelligence agencies around the world) is elevating them on a list of VPNs to break.

I've said this before, but PIA and other similar VPN providers are great security against most drive-by hackers. I am a happy customer for this reason. But if your threat model includes "NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA", you are going to have to spend more than $4 a month to remain secure.

> if your threat model includes "NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA"...

I think there are two vastly different threat model within that - (a) large-scale and indiscriminate vacuuming up of the average citizen's Internet usage data to fill up datacenters and do analytics, and (b) active targeting of a specific subject.

I'm hoping a VPN will insulate me against (a) too. But for (b), I don't think I stand much of a chance even if I spent $400 a month.

Re: VPN Encryption

#40

Post by r0h1n »

eli wrote: post #25
r0h1n wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't store any user logs (I have no reason to suspect they'd lie about that). So there's not much stored data to break. Which means the focus will be on breaking their traffic encryption protocols.

Not necessarily. There's no need to break the encryption or have logs if the NSA can monitor all the traffic going in and out of the proxy server. They just have to correlate your incoming encrypted connection with the outgoing unencrypted data to remove the layer of anonymity. I'd frankly be a little surprised if they weren't doing this or something like it. I would guess that using PIA makes you less secure against…

> I would guess that using PIA makes you less secure against NSA snooping since it makes you more of a target and provides weak anonymity.

So you're saying not using encryption and VPN services is a safer choice as regards Internet usage today? You seem to be going against the grain of most of what's been discussed around privacy & Internet surveillance on HN recently.

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