[HN Gopher] Review of Mullvad VPN
___________________________________________________________________
Review of Mullvad VPN
Author : ylk
Score : 452 points
Date : 2024-12-11 18:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (x41-dsec.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (x41-dsec.de)
| ylk wrote:
| Link to Mullvad's blog post: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/the-
| report-for-the-2024-security...
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The Mullvad VPN _app_. Not the service.
| Always42 wrote:
| Thanks for helping me not waste my time
| promano wrote:
| There was an audit of the VPN servers earlier this year:
|
| https://mullvad.net/en/blog/fourth-infrastructure-audit-comp...
| mplewis wrote:
| This is relevant to folks evaluating VPN providers as the app
| is most users' entrypoint to the service.
| gpvos wrote:
| Of course, but that doesn't make the title less misleading.
| aftbit wrote:
| Direct link to the PDF report:
|
| https://x41-dsec.de/static/reports/X41-Mullvad-Audit-Public-...
|
| Titles of issues they found:
|
| 4.1.1 MLLVD-CR-24-01: Signal Handler's Alternate Stack Too Small
|
| 4.1.2 MLLVD-CR-24-02: Signal Handler Uses Non-Async-Safe
| Functions
|
| 4.1.3 MLLVD-CR-24-03: Virtual IP Address of Tunnel Device Leaks
| to Net- work Adjacent Participant
|
| 4.1.4 MLLVD-CR-24-04: Deanonymization Through NAT
|
| 4.1.5 MLLVD-CR-24-05: Deanonymization Through MTU
|
| 4.1.6 MLLVD-CR-24-06: Sideloading Into Setup Process
|
| All pretty straightforward IMO. They lean on "DAITA" aka Defence
| against AI Traffic Analysis pretty heavily, which I don't fully
| understand yet, but is probably worth some further reading.
|
| https://mullvad.net/en/vpn/daita
| daghamm wrote:
| I think the paper is easier to follow
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3603216.3624953
| ratorx wrote:
| Safe signal handling has so many footguns that it seems worth
| re-considering the entire API.
|
| Even OpenSSH has had issues with it [1].
|
| It seems very difficult to build good abstractions for it in
| any programming language, without introducing some function
| colouring mechanism explicitly for this. Maybe a pure language
| like Haskell could do it.
|
| [1]: https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-
| research/2024...
| jandrese wrote:
| Or it's nearly impossible for a pure functional language if
| the result of the async signal means you need to mutate some
| state elsewhere in the program to deal with the issue.
| ratorx wrote:
| I think that's slightly orthogonal. It would still be safe,
| because you'd design around this restriction from the
| start, rather than accidentally call or mutate something
| you were not supposed to.
|
| The problem with safe signal handling is that you need to
| verify that your entire signal handler call stack is async
| safe. Assuming purity is a stronger property, signal
| handling is a safe API without any more work.
|
| The inflexibility due to the purity might cause other
| issues but that's more a language level concern. If the
| signal handling API is safe and inflexible, it still seems
| better for a lot of use cases than an unsafe by default
| one.
| o11c wrote:
| The real problem is that the compiler doesn't provide
| arbitrary function-colorings, only the a handful of
| builtins: `pure`, `const`, `noreturn`.
| s-zeng wrote:
| Monads can be thought of as arbitrary function
| colourings, hence the prior mention of Haskell
| potentially being a good fit. Of course monads are
| implementable in almost any other language, but few have
| as much syntax sugar or general library support as
| Haskell does, except maybe Ocaml
| jandrese wrote:
| Yeah, but how do you design a Monad that does the "tell
| this other thread to unblock and unwind its state because
| an external error has triggered? You know, the basic
| function of an interrupt?
| ratorx wrote:
| There's two separate aspects here:
|
| 1) Monads used to restrict the computation available in
| the context of a signal handler (or function coloring
| etc, basically a way for a compiler or static checker to
| determine that a block of code does not call unsafe
| functions)
|
| 2) The actual process of handling a signal received by
| the signal handler
|
| I think me and the parent are referring to 1). 2) is also
| important, but it is not a signal specific concern. Even
| without a signal handler, if you want to write an
| application which handles async input, you have to handle
| the case of processing the input to do something useful
| (eg. let's say you are writing an HTTP server and want to
| have a network endpoint for safely killing the thing).
|
| I think the generally recommended way to represent 2) in
| a pure way is to model the signal as a state machine
| input and handle it like all other communication.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Haskell's runtime is so complex that I don't think you can
| write signal handling functions in Haskell. The best you can
| do is to mark a sigatomic boolean inside the real signal
| handler and arrange the runtime for check for that boolean
| outside the signal handler.
|
| Yup: see https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ghc-
| internal-9.1001.0/do... where it is clear that setting a
| handler simply writes to an array inside an MVar. And when
| the signal handler is run, the runtime starts a green thread
| to run it, which means user Haskell code does not need to
| worry about signal handler safe functions at all, since from
| the OS perspective the signal handler has returned. The user
| handler function simply runs as a new green thread
| independent of other threads.
|
| But I like the fact that you brought up this idea. Haskell
| can't do it but in a parallel universe if there were another
| language with no runtime but with monads, we can actually
| solve this.
| nine_k wrote:
| Why can't e.g. Rust have monads, Haskell-style? It has
| tailcall elimination, so endless application of functions
| should be doable.
|
| Monads being ergonomic is another question, but probably
| solvable.
|
| What am I missing?
| Lvl999Noob wrote:
| I am not sure but I think rust already allows safe signal
| handlers? The borrow checker makes you write thread safe
| code even without any active threading and signals are
| just emergency threads with some extra limitations...
| right? I don't understand this too deeply so I could be
| wrong here.
| ratorx wrote:
| It wouldn't be as bad if it was that simple :)
|
| If handling a signal was equivalent to handling
| concurrency then it wouldn't be as much of a problem.
|
| IIRC a signal can take over execution of a running
| thread, so it will completely invalidate any critical
| sections etc. You cannot access any shared resource
| easily, cannot allocate memory and a lot more
| restrictions of this form.
| Lvl999Noob wrote:
| Yes but the signal handling code acts as if it is on a
| different thread. So it cannot access the critical
| sections or mess up any existing state on the thread
| anyways. Sure the other parts need to be managed manually
| but just that should still go a long way. ...Right?
| monocasa wrote:
| Rust does allow for safe signal handling, but it's sort
| of the same way that it allows for safe and correct
| interrupt handlers for people writing os kernels (signals
| are basically interrupts, just from kernel->user instead
| of hardware->kernel). You're basically constrained to
| no_std and have to be very careful about communications
| with the rest of the system using lock free mechanisms.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| In fish-shell we have to forego using the niceties of the
| rust standard library and make very carefully measured calls
| to libc posix functions directly, with extra care taken to
| make sure so memory used (eg for formatting errors or
| strings) was allocated beforehand.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| The best thing you can do is set a global variable value and
| that's it. Let your main even loop mind the value and proceed
| from there. Only do this in a single thread and block singles
| in all others as the first thing you do. Threads and signals
| do not mix otherwise.
|
| Another option is to use a proper OS that includes the
| ability to receive signals as a part of your main event
| loops: https://man.openbsd.org/kqueue.2#EVFILT_SIGNAL
|
| I believe you can also do something similar with epoll() on
| Linux but not sure the semantics are quite as nice as kqueue.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > Another option is to use a proper OS that includes the
| ability to receive signals as a part of your main event
| loops
|
| Every 'nix can do that. Your signal handler just writes a
| byte to a pipe and your main loop reads the pipe or fifo.
| The pipe/fifo is your event queue, which your main loop
| reads.
| o11c wrote:
| You want signalfd, which may optionally fed to epoll or any
| of the other multiplexing syscalls.
|
| Signalfd can mostly be implemented on any platform using a
| pipe (if you don't have to mix 32-bit and 64-bit processes,
| or if you don't need the siginfo payload, or if you read
| your kernel's documentation enough to figure out which
| "layout" of the union members is active - this is really
| hairy). Note however the major caveat of running out of
| pipe buffer.
|
| A more-reliable alternative is to use an async-signal-safe
| allocator (e.g. an `mmap` wrapper) to atomically store the
| payloads, and only use a pipe as a flag for whether there's
| something to look for.
|
| Of course, _none_ of these mechanisms are useful for
| naturally synchronous signals, such as the `SIGSEGV` from
| dereferencing an invalid pointer, so the function-coloring
| approach still needs to be used.
| immibis wrote:
| on Linux you are talking about signalfd. Block all signals
| and then reading from a signalfd returns one pending
| blocked signal.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> The best thing you can do is set a global variable value
| and that's it._
|
| Seems kinda limiting.
|
| If I've got a slow file download going on in one thread,
| and my program gets a Ctrl+C signal, waiting for the
| download to complete before I exit ain't exactly a great
| user experience.
| barbegal wrote:
| Stack too small - there's no proof the 8k allocated is too
| small, is it really exploitable?
|
| Non async functions - pretty common problem but difficult to
| actually exploit. Every developer who has worked with signal
| handlers has probably made this mistake at some point because
| the issues it causes are extremely difficult to reproduce (some
| incredibly unlucky timing is required)
|
| Arp leaking addresses - Not really a Mullvad issue and only
| exploitable on the local network
|
| Deanonymization attacks - these work against all VPNs and you
| can always anonymize traffic more but it has a cost to do this.
|
| Sideloading - Yeah this is probably the worst one but is not
| exploitable on it's own.
| runjake wrote:
| dang "X41 audited the Mullvad VPN app" might be a clearer title.
| rfoo wrote:
| > Virtual IP Address of Tunnel Device Leaks to Network Adjacent
| Participant > X41 recommends to mitigate the issue by setting the
| kernel parameter arp_ignore to 1 on Linux. > It is also
| recommended to randomize the virtual IP address for each user on
| each connection if possible.
|
| ... isn't randomizing the virtual IP address makes the situation
| worse? sounds like the best solution would be just give every
| user the same boring static IP address like 169.254.199.1/30.
| Aachen wrote:
| Worse how?
| kdmtctl wrote:
| For each session. Keys are rotated frequently, so a lot of
| noise could be produced. The only and one address is a good
| strategy for anti fingerprint though, but it is not easy to
| achieve for WG tunnels and pure L3 routing.
|
| Personally I don't really get their multi hop when you connect
| on a predefined port on an ingress server to get redirected to
| egress in a different region. Easy guessable for a powerful
| observer.
|
| Anyway any VPN is only an encryption tool, not an anonymizer.
| klysm wrote:
| I'm convinced signal handlers are nearly impossible to write
| without introducing terribly gnarly race conditions.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| The presence of signals in UNIX made me reach the following
| conclusion: event loop should be mandatory (or at least opt-
| out), something setup in the CRT before main(). Of course,
| we're not living in such a well-made C world.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| If you're lucky enough to structure your entire app in advance
| to keep in mind how sync signals are delivered, you can
| _ususllly_ get away with only setting an atomic Boolean,
| incrementing an atomic int, or setting a binary semaphore.
| ziddoap wrote:
| This is a nice audit report. The dedicated threat model section
| is something that a lot of auditing outfits skip over in their
| reports. While I'm positive Cure53, Assured, and Atredis (the
| previous auditors) established an appropriate threat model with
| Mullvad prior to engagement, it's not explicitly written out for
| the reader, which opens up room for misinterpretation of the
| findings.
| wutwutwat wrote:
| > established an appropriate threat model with Mullvad prior to
| engagement
|
| Doesn't this make it kinda pointless? If the target has a say
| in how they should perform their audit/attack, how does that
| not produce results biased to the targets favor? Wouldn't the
| most unbiased way to do such a thing would be for the target to
| have zero idea what the auditor would be doing?
|
| > which opens up room for misinterpretation of the findings
|
| If Mullvad dictated how to do things or imposed limits on the
| reach of the testing, the results are worthless anyway
| palata wrote:
| Say I manufacture door locks, and I ask you to audit the
| security of my system. Wouldn't it make sense to agree with
| you that stuff like lockpicking is fine, but going around the
| building, breaking a window and entering the room doesn't
| count as "breaking the lock security"?
|
| That's the whole point of a threat model: Mullvad has a
| threat model, and they build a product resistant to that.
| When someone audits the product, they should audit it against
| the threat model.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Doesn 't this make it kinda pointless?_
|
| To do an audit you have to audit _against_ some sort of pre-
| established criteria. That is how audits work. In security,
| that will typically be a standard (or set of standards)
| alongside a threat model. In finances, you audit against what
| is legal in the areas you operate.
|
| > _[...] zero idea what the auditor would be doing?_
|
| That's a practical impossibility. From the client side you
| want to be able to evaluate quotes, stay within a budget,
| etc. You don't want to pay good money (audits are really
| expensive!) for areas that you are works-in-progress, or non-
| applicable threat models (e.g. lots of security software
| explicitly does not protect against nation-state actors, so
| they don't do audits from the perspective of a nation-state
| actor).
|
| From the auditor side, you want to know what staff to assign
| (according to their expertise), how to schedule your staff,
| etc.
|
| > _If Mullvad dictated how to do things or imposed limits on
| the reach of the testing, the results are worthless anyway_
|
| Not at all. The company says "This is the set of standards we
| are auditing against and our threat model. This is how we
| performed". The results are useful for everything covered by
| those standards and threat model. By explicitly stating the
| threat model, you as a consumer can compare your threat model
| to the one that was audited and make an informed decision.
| thadt wrote:
| No, the results would be worthless only if _your_ threat
| model were significantly different than the one that Mullvad
| was operating under. In which case, having the threat model
| detailed explicitly is already valuable to you.
|
| For example, this X41's threat model only supposes that an
| attacker could execute code on the system as a different,
| unprivileged user. They don't consider the situation where an
| attacker might have an administrative account on the system.
|
| For my personal devices today, this matches my threat model.
| If an attacker has an administrative account on my machine, I
| assume that my VPN isn't going to be able to protect my
| traffic from them. There's no need to worry about laying out
| all the ways this could impact Mullvad's client.
| aseipp wrote:
| Because the client often has actual knowledge of their design
| and the places where they want force to be applied to find
| weaknesses, because they're trying to evaluate the results
| with regards to specific outcomes, not every possible open-
| ended question you can think up. On top of that there is a
| reasonable limit in terms of time/money/staff/resources that
| can be spent on these kinds of audits, etc. For example, if
| you're using a cloud provider it's not like you're going to
| pay them infinity money to compromise GCP over the course of
| 9 months through a background operator compromise or some
| nation-state attack. You're not going to pay them to spend
| all day finding 0days in OpenSSL when your business runs a
| Django app. You're going to set baseline rules like "You need
| to compromise our account under some approaches, like social
| engineering of our own employees, or elevating privileges by
| attacking the software and pivoting."
|
| It's mostly just a matter of having a defined scope. They
| could of course say "You can only attack this one exact
| thing" that makes them look good, but this is true of many
| things.
|
| Defining the threat model is standard in the infosec
| auditing/pentest world, FWIW.
|
| > If Mullvad dictated how to do things or imposed limits on
| the reach of the testing, the results are worthless anyway
|
| That's only true if your threat model is "literally every
| possible thing that could ever happen", which is so broad to
| be meaningless and impossible to test anyway.
|
| Computer programmers also do not typically design their
| programs under the assumption that someone stuffed newspaper
| between their CPU and heatsink and it caught on fire. They
| work on the assumption the computer is not on fire.
| atoav wrote:
| The way I see it you _have_ to have a threat model, otherwise
| your problem space is way to big.
|
| If I ask a person to do a audit I will tell them what the
| scope of their audit is, e.g. check the physical security
| measures of our server rooms. Otherwise they would have to
| take literally everything into consideration (what if the
| accountant is a malicous actor, what if the server rooms are
| attacked by a military, what if our hardware is swapped out
| during delivery, what if..) and they would never be able to
| stop.
|
| If you take security seriously you try to defend against
| likely attack scenarios first. Your way to control that is by
| choosing the scope of audit.
| Ekaros wrote:
| It depends. Auditing the mitigations defined in threat model
| does make sense with say IEC 62443. This would not be only
| penetration testing done. But it is reasonable process. You
| want to know if the mitigations you have put in place against
| identified threats work or can be thwarted from outside
| perspective.
| toast0 wrote:
| An audit is fundamentally a report on if what the target says
| is credible.
|
| So, first you have to determine what the target says.
|
| Then you look around to see if that seems accurate.
|
| Then you look around to see what are the systems and controls
| that are in place to keep things in a controlled state in the
| future.
| dsp_person wrote:
| An example where auditors not having the threat model did not
| help the audit: https://defuse.ca/audits/gocryptfs.htm
|
| > We believe the reason these vulnerabilities exist is
| because gocryptfs doesn't have a clearly spelled-out threat
| model. Some of the attacks seem hard to avoid given
| gocryptfs's performance goals and may have been introduced
| "by design" to meet these goals. We suggest writing down an
| explicit threat model and updating the website to better
| communicate the security guarantees that gocryptfs provides.
| This way, users are less likely to rely on it in ways which
| would make them vulnerable.
|
| Later established:
| https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/threat_model/
| puffybuf wrote:
| I use mullvad VPN with wireguard on OpenBSD (man wg). Works
| great. You can buy months with bitcoin for anonymity.
| chucknthem wrote:
| Became a fan of Mullvad when I visited China. It was the most
| reliable VPN app I tested and you can have up to 5 devices per
| account.
| whoistraitor wrote:
| It is probably the most reliable yeh, tho spending time here
| I've grown increasingly aware that the great firewall is more
| than aware of this vpn traffic, even if it's wrapped up to
| look like normal traffic. They periodically will seem to
| 'dial down' the internet, especially at politically sensitive
| times. They are fully aware great swathes of the populace and
| visitors use VPNs, and they choose to allow it. They'd rather
| control and monitor than inspire even more opaque channels.
| antihero wrote:
| Even if you buy it with BTC surely you're still connecting with
| your real IP?
| nexoft wrote:
| not if he is using his neighors
|
| maybe he is using tor on top of it
|
| who knows
| btmiller wrote:
| I've never understood the neighbor approach. What's the
| logic for that? Instead of your skin, it's a person one
| door down from you, that was generous enough to share their
| connection with you? That's not anonymity, that's just
| outsourcing the identity to someone that probably extended
| trust to you. And if other things like Tor remove that
| connection, then what was the point of using a neighbor in
| the first place?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Generous to share? What makes you think the neighbor even
| knows about it? Also, one door down? They make antennas
| that can reach much further than that. If you're in a
| high rise building, you can even be picking up something
| from another floor in a different building more than one
| door down.
|
| You're just not trying very hard if you're using your
| immediate next door neighbor.
| redserk wrote:
| This is an unnecessarily obtuse and pedantic response to
| the thought being raised.
|
| Yes, a neighbor may not realize they're sharing their
| network, however, interpreting their "next door" comment
| as a literal unit of proximity doesn't make your comment
| look as intelligent as you may think it does.
| pixxel wrote:
| This is an unnecessarily obtuse and pedantic response to
| the thought being raised and doesn't make your comment
| look as intelligent as you may think it does.
| puffybuf wrote:
| No they have tor onion links
| ale42 wrote:
| To connect to the VPN through TOR?!
| Aachen wrote:
| Web search "mullvad onion" ->
| https://mullvad.net/en/blog/mullvad-onions-served-best-
| anony... so yes, they do, it's not hard to find
| ylk wrote:
| That's for accessing the website, not for sending your
| traffic via TOR to Mullvad. I don't think they have a
| built-in way to send traffic to them via TOR without
| going through an exit node.
| Aachen wrote:
| Oh, huh that's odd, why provide website access but then
| not actually product access when your product is a
| network service. Didn't think to read further than the
| headline because of that I guess, thanks for correcting
| me
| puffybuf wrote:
| I should point out getting bitcoin anonymously requires some
| work too (if you buy BTC it is tied to your CC, and many
| exchanges require your ssn). Mullvad does allow you to send
| them cash anonymously in the mail as well.
| Tiberium wrote:
| Mullvad also allows you to pay in Monero which by itself is
| still considered anonymous, no one broke it (yet?).
| Zambyte wrote:
| The most anonymous way to purchase a Mullvad subscription
| is ironically buying a card from Amazon
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Mullvad-VPN-Windows-Android-
| SCRATCH/d...
|
| Edit: I realized they accept Monero. That is probably about
| equally anonymous.
| ylk wrote:
| You can also mail them cash
| mmooss wrote:
| > You can buy months with bitcoin for anonymity.
|
| Bitcoin isn't anonymous. Am I misunderstanding something?
| k_vi wrote:
| there are ways around it.
|
| - use coinjoin with something like wasabi
| wallet(https://wasabiwallet.io/)
|
| - purchase BTC with cash
| leonewton253 wrote:
| They accept Monero
| arlort wrote:
| They accept cash in an envelope
| larschdk wrote:
| Banknotes have serial numbers. Don't think that they are
| impossible to track.
| arlort wrote:
| A serial number is not a tracking device. A sufficiently
| determined adversary with unlimited resources and access
| could maybe track you via it
|
| But practically speaking an afternoon of shopping,
| exchanging coins for banknotes, breaking those into coins
| and back again will make it as untraceable as possible.
|
| Especially since we're talking about 60 euro per year
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| They are not impossible to track, but that would be
| relevant _only if Mullvad were severely compromised_ --
| and even then, we would only be in _almost_ impossible
| territory.
|
| There are no central repositories as to the location of
| arbitrary banknote serial numbers.
|
| Lets assume, for the sake of argument, that a cash-paying
| user were to make the mistake of paying every single time
| to renew the same suspicious Mullvad account using cash
| which was _always_ newly withdrawn from cash machines
| from a banking institution which meticulously tracks them
| and is able to report from which location they originated
| (maybe even the card which withdrew them!).
|
| In that case, if Mullvad were to be compromised (or if
| the targeted user was such an absolute threat to
| humankind that Mullvad were to agree to collaborate in
| his or her capture), it would only be possible if
| Mullvad's mail receivers were to either _a)_ actively
| keep track of either banknote serial number and link it
| to a customer, or _b)_ be fully aware of the requirement
| to make a note of it only of received to renew the target
| account.
|
| Anything short of that and even the perfectly traceable
| banknote serial number just becomes one of hundreds?
| thousands? deposited by Mullvad in their bank accounts --
| assuming they don't even use some of them as petty cash
| if needed.
|
| If a user of Mullvad were to reach that level of a threat
| model I would argue they would be much more likely to be
| caught by tracking of their sent mail, in the style of
| Ted Kaczynski.
| mmooss wrote:
| > There are no central repositories as to the location of
| arbitrary banknote serial numbers.
|
| Why do you say that?
|
| All that's needed is banks tracking serial numbers and
| associated persons as cash leaves the bank and enters it.
| The serial numbers on American cash seem machine
| readable, and on each bill they are printed in two places
| near opposite corners - as if they are designed for
| automated reading.
|
| It doesn't have to be perfect, logically infallible,
| alibi-proof evidence. You could build a pretty good graph
| of who is doing business with whom, especially by
| examining repetitions of the same edges. At worst, it
| seems useful for intelligence tasks and to obtain
| worthwhile leads to pursue.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Not if you launder it...
|
| Fun fact: you can just mail Mullvad some cash in an envelope.
| No need for any cryptocurrency
| cassianoleal wrote:
| You can also buy a scratch card with credits.
| ramblerman wrote:
| transactions aren't anonymous and always publicly tied to a
| sending and a receiving wallet.
|
| Who owns that wallet can absolutely be an unknown - although
| practically with 99% people buying through coinbase this
| isn't the case.
| seethishat wrote:
| I pay for VPN service with a credit card in my name that I have
| had for years. I'm not trying to hide the fact that I
| occasionally use a VPN. The ISP sees the tunnel, the websites I
| visit see the VPN IP, netflow logs the time, duration, bytes
| transferred, etc. It's no secret that I am using a VPN.
|
| IMO, most VPN users are normal people, like me, who just want
| privacy from online advertisers and data aggregators. I do not
| want or expect privacy from the VPN provider. After all, I
| connect to their VPN service from my home ISP (which has an IP)
| that has an account in my name too.
|
| No matter how you try to hide your payment for the VPN service,
| they know who you are.
|
| IMO, technical people often 'go too far' and become
| unreasonable about these things (especially security people).
| They have lost touch with real-world threat models and use
| cases. James Mickens has a good short paper on this called
| 'This World of Ours'
| https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf
| accidbuddy wrote:
| Is there any serious website that reviews (rank list) these VPNs?
| I say this because it is always difficult to find information
| that is not sponsored on the internet. In fact, I've always heard
| that Mullvad is one of the best, even supporting P2P
| vigilans wrote:
| You heard wrong. Mullvad is _the_ best ;)
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| Port forwarding was removed a year ago which handicapped P2P.
|
| https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-f...
| npteljes wrote:
| The go-to used to be the website of "that one privacy guy".
| Now, on who is this guy, and whether this is really his site, I
| have no idea.
|
| https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/#detailed-vpn-comparison
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| > (Data last updated on 20/07/19)
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, if you knew who he was, he wouldn't be a very good
| privacy guy, now, would he?
| npteljes wrote:
| I get what you're getting at, but no, in hindsight, I like
| my privacy and security watchdogs to be transparent. Like
| Bruce Schneier. And for a counterexample, Satoshi. I lost
| my trust in anonymous randos, for authenticity, I like
| someone with a professional face and contact info.
| bubblethink wrote:
| These rankings are going to be meaningless and littered with
| blog spam. VPNs as a category are mostly snake oil. The only
| real world use for vpns is circumventing censorship if you live
| in a place that censors. The only privacy you're gaining is
| that from your ISP.
| wyclif wrote:
| I don't think that's the only real world use for VPNs. For
| instance, you might be working remote from a foreign country
| and not want your employer to know that. It's not something
| that I would recommend, but you know it happens.
| ale42 wrote:
| My employer blocks all known VPN endpoints (as well as TOR
| exit nodes) with ingress filtering. Because many attacks
| come from there...
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _The only privacy you 're gaining is that from your ISP._
|
| This alone can be worth it for many people. I trust Mullvad
| significantly more than I trust my ISP.
| bubblethink wrote:
| But you are giving very little to the ISP to begin with.
| You can use encrypted DNS and most web content has TLS. The
| only gap there is SNI, which we should be able to close
| with TLS ECH. I don't know why ECH has been so slow to roll
| out.
| piaste wrote:
| Encrypted DNS is certainly an improvement, but it's only
| as anonymous as the IP address you are connecting to.
|
| I am not aware of any firewalls that enforce the rule
| 'only attempt to connect to massively-shared cloud IPs
| that can't be easily subject to a reverse DNS lookup'.
| muppetman wrote:
| Yup. I am in awe of what a great job VPN providers have done
| marketing this stuff to people, just how utter convinced they
| are they need them. It's next level marketing and it's
| amazing. Making an entire market almost overnight out of
| nothing.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
|
| Discussion of the audit of TFA on the Privacy Guides forum:
|
| https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/mullvads-2024-security-a...
| culi wrote:
| This hasn't been updated for a while but this is by far the
| most thorough breakdown/comparison of all vpn services
|
| https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/#detailed-vpn-comparison
| stallion1892 wrote:
| I'm surprised no one has mentioned techlore.tech
| mmooss wrote:
| Where does Mullvad get all this money? I've seen physical ads in
| different places in the world, audits, etc.
|
| I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, but is the VPN business that
| good? Are they funded by a privacy group?
| kdmtctl wrote:
| They provide white label for Mozilla, Tailscale and may be some
| others I am not aware of. Plus they really sell a lot of
| subscriptions.
| rsyring wrote:
| Nit: they have a partnership with Tailscale to offer the VPN
| as a part of a tailnet that subscribes to the service.
|
| But, it's not white label. White label implies it would be
| Tailscale VPN (or similar) with no reference to Mullvalad in
| their docs or marketing. But that's not what is happening
| with their offering.
| kdmtctl wrote:
| Fair point. This is a collab.
| nikcub wrote:
| and they've been accepting bitcoin since 2010. I assume
| they've done very well from that (I'm afraid to calculate
| what the present value of my mullvad subscription would be)
| nly wrote:
| Why would they have done well? they likely use a payment
| processor who dynamically price their EUR fees in Bitcoin
| and immediately liquidate all Bitcoin received.
| Tiberium wrote:
| They run their own full nodes for each blockchain they
| support, so I highly doubt they cash out crypto that
| often.
| wallaBBB wrote:
| Have you cared to check the tiers they offer? Hint: not that
| many, and no free ones.
|
| And knowing that mullvad doesn't come close to the mainstream
| marketing others (well in essence one) VPN providers, your
| comment comes of as malicious.
| chris_wot wrote:
| I don't think its helpful to say that the comment you
| responded to was in any way malicious. It was a reasonable
| question.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Especially from someone who doesn't know all that much
| about the VPN business beyond seeing ads for it in some
| public locations and the very basics of what it is.
| wallaBBB wrote:
| It had a vary suspicions statement. They stated that they
| see specifically a lot of Mullvad ads. Not general VPN ads.
| That is what makes is sound malicious. Mullvad is not even
| close to being in the group of biggest marketing spenders.
|
| You need a minute on their website to see that they have a
| very simple approach to funding their business. No "life
| time subscription" exclusive offers, no BS privacy
| claims...
|
| Also this is HN, not a comment section on something like
| Yahoo news, really hard to consider people commenting here
| as being detached from tech trends and news.
| defrost wrote:
| Mullvad has a small number of well targeted ads in my
| experience.
|
| If the person above frequents certain torrent trackers,
| reads _Torrent Freak_ , or travels in other small VPN
| adjacent circles then it's no stretch to imagine they
| have seen Mullvad mentioned a great deal, both through
| ads and through unsponsered forum members ranking Mullvad
| high on their HOWTO safely do {X} guides.
| piaste wrote:
| Surprising! I would have expected that the Venn diagram
| of potential Mullvad customers and uBlock Origin users
| would be a circle.
| defrost wrote:
| Thinking outside the uBlock box most of the Mullvad
| advertorial placement I see is from _Best VPNs for the
| coming Dystopia_ articles and host forum site banners
| (not on typical ad black lists), fellow user guides, etc.
|
| So, not Mullvad ads being blocked but actual Mullvad
| themed content positioned as of direct interest to the
| target demographic.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >is the VPN business that good?
|
| One of my use cases for VPN is to watch free, legal anime on
| YouTube from Muse-Asia. I use a VPN to connect to Indonesia,
| which allows me to watch anime like Dandadan. a US IP won't
| show anything on their Youtube page. I'm using Mullvad VPN.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Dandadan is on Netflix... and Crunchy Roll.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Netflix costs a lot more per month than 5 euros. Plus you
| can use the VPN for countless other things.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Oh so you're stealing. Got it.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| That's a very stupid and offensive response, considering
| the OP explicitly wrote: "One of my use cases for VPN is
| to watch free, legal anime on YouTube from Muse-Asia."
| mmooss wrote:
| How do you see that affecting Mullvad revenue? It doesn't
| seem like a big business.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Since they're a Swedish company, their yearly report is public:
| [1]. 25% profit margin (Vinstmarginal) does sound quite nice.
|
| [1]: https://www.bolagsfakta.se/5592384001-Mullvad_VPN_AB
| 4ad wrote:
| > Where does Mullvad get all this money?
|
| From their customers.
| bubblethink wrote:
| It has reasonable margins. $5 is quite a lot of money to just
| route traffic.
| gagabity wrote:
| CIA
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| or KGB. Or both :)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| There is that small country called China...
|
| You are probably aware of the "Great Firewall of China" that
| blocks access from mainland China to Google, Meta, etc... Which
| means that if you are a westerner in China and want to access
| the internet as you know it, or if you are Chinese and access
| the rest of the world, then you need some kind of VPN to bypass
| the restrictions.
|
| The Great Firewall is quite advanced, and you need some layers
| of stealth not to be detected and blocked. Furthermore, they
| actively search for VPN endpoints and block their IP addresses.
| It limits your choice of VPNs, and Mullvad is one of the good
| ones for that purpose, along with Astrill and LetsVPN.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Not in China, but in a similar country using DPI inspections
| to block. Neither Mullvad nor any other rank and file VPN
| works. Need to use something like xray to bypass.
| Loranubi wrote:
| Various VPNs allow to tunnel over SSH. If they don't want
| to block all SSH traffic, DPI is useless.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| do you mean, xray to a vps and install mullvad on that
| vps? Tried that, but as soon as I install mullvad on a
| vps, I'm no longer able to ssh into it. Gave up, too
| complex.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| What I understand is that they are using machine learning
| techniques to detect access patterns. Even if they don't
| understand the bytes because it is encrypted, they can
| match the sizes and timing of packets. So if the tunnel
| over SSH technique is common, and they detect a SSH
| connection that behaves in a specific way, for example
| because of fixed-size handshake packets, they can guess
| it is tunneling a VPN.
| meowfly wrote:
| That was my experience.
|
| When I was in China I would use my own VPN using ec2 and
| the now defunct Streisand (which uses stunnel). First few
| requests were always fast but as you use more bandwidth
| your requests would start to slow down considerably.
|
| Oddly a foreign sim gets uncensored internet, so that's
| what I've recommended to travelers, but haven't been back
| since COVID so that might be outdated info.
| immibis wrote:
| This seems to be mostly a test of the VPN client application, not
| the VPN service. However, "Deanonymization Through NAT" is about
| the VPN service.
| tptacek wrote:
| I was going to go on a little rant about public audit reports
| that say stuff like "this company is very secure and is doing
| things great and this audit confirms that" --- not at all an
| x41-specific complaint, virtually all assessment firms are guilty
| of it, some much more than x41.
|
| But: they found a triggerable heap corruption vulnerability in a
| Rust program, which is a nice catch.
|
| I do think giving the vulnerability that follows that one a
| sev:hi, despite it being both theoretical (I don't think they
| have a POC) and not corrupting memory, is grade inflation though.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Mullvad used to be great. But their stopping port forwarding
| makes torrents much worse. Their deprecation of openvpn sucks for
| me too. I have a couple usecases that need that. So I'm going to
| move to another one.
|
| Too bad because they were good for a long time.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I miss them and had to move elsewhere due to the
| discontinuation of port forwarding.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah it's a really important feature for many people.
| Torrents just don't really work without it. Three quarters of
| peers are behind NAT or VPN so without port forwarding they
| won't connect. If you have some Torrents with only a handful
| of seeders it makes it really difficult.
| palata wrote:
| Doesn't BitTorrent do some NAT traversal stuff? Genuinely
| interested.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Not really no. If both peers are behind NAT they just
| can't connect. There's no central server to facilitate
| hole punching.
| zo1 wrote:
| With the availability and ease of use of Seed boxes, this
| feature is kinda moot. It doesn't even cater to power users
| any more because they've all moved to seed boxes a really
| long time ago. This just leaves semi-serious individuals
| that want to take the risk of torrenting on their private
| internet connection.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah I'm not a big torrenter but sometimes I want an old
| show that is only offered by a few seeders. And then most
| of them don't work due to this.
|
| If you just want to grab the latest blockbuster it's no
| problem no.
|
| I've never thought of getting a seedbox, i always thought
| the amount of storage required would be prohibitively
| expensive for a VPS. Also, I'd still want to use a VPN so
| the VPS provider isn't the only protection layer.
| zo1 wrote:
| You'd be surprised how much storage space these seed
| boxes provide for very little cost. And these things
| aren't VPSs anymore. They're glorified SaaS products that
| give you Netflix streaming in a box, for less than the
| cost of Netflix itself. I would recommend doing a
| "reddit" search on the topic and you'll find many many
| recommendations and ideas.
|
| Personally, I do it because of the "Netflix effect".
| Movies and series don't exist if they're not on Netflix
| (or your chosen streaming platform). And with my kids
| growing up, I want them to see the good shows and movies
| I grew up with just as they share the shows they enjoy
| now with me. I can comfortably say that 99.9% of that
| media is never offered on Netflix.
|
| Screw Netflix, it's been captured.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What's the cost to seed 20TB? Asking for a friend
|
| Some ppl on these sites seed over 500 TB
| zo1 wrote:
| Everyone wants to seed, so it's over saturated. Thus you
| won't be hitting the limits any time soon, and if you get
| close you just manage it with limits.
|
| But to answer your question, for 25TB I've seen packages
| that cost 20euro, which is pretty much the same as what
| Netflix premium charges in the US.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I call bullshit. 25TB for 20 euro/mo? Where?!
| zo1 wrote:
| I'm not gonna advertise them here. Next thing you know
| the wrong person takes an interest in this area of the
| internet and spoils it for the rest of us.
|
| Trust me, I looked at the page of my provider just now
| and that's what they offer.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Seed boxes are expensive.
| bananapub wrote:
| They still are great by any reasonable standard. Dropping port
| forwarding massively reduces the amount of abuse they have to
| deal with and only affects a tiny fringe of super nerds.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| VPN users are either super nerds or Joe Average mandated by
| company policy.
| resonious wrote:
| I still see tons of NordVPN sponsorship messages on
| youtube. I wonder if they've managed to pick up any good
| amount of regular people users or not. They sure do seem to
| be trying.
| xelamonster wrote:
| I like NordVPN still. If there's any reason I shouldn't
| I'm all ears but haven't had an issue so far. I travel a
| lot and I definitely do feel better having my traffic
| routed through a VPN vs opening it up to whatever random
| entity happens to control the wifi I'm connected to,
| despite all the issues with them
| resonious wrote:
| I have nothing against NordVPN. I just generally agree
| with the statement that VPN users are either nerds or
| employees of companies that mandate it. But at the same
| time, I see Nord aggressively advertising to the general
| population - genuinely curious how successful that might
| be.
| barnabee wrote:
| Pretty much every non-techy person I know under the age
| of about 50 uses VPNs for accessing regionally restricted
| streaming TV and sports[0] content, and getting around
| geoblocks (on US news sites that won't serve to Europe
| due to GDPR, trading/gambling sites, etc.).
|
| I am pretty sure the sheer quantity of VPN ads on YT are
| also good evidence that they work and people are signing
| up. It wouldn't make sense to scale up a marketing
| approach to those levels unless earlier, smaller
| campaigns had positive returns.
|
| [0] It's worth calling out explicitly the crazy lengths
| people will go to to both (a) find a free stream of a
| sports match; and (b) find a way to watch a match when
| they're travelling and can't access whatever service they
| usually watch it on.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| A lot of normal people have used VPN's for years now to get
| around geolocks on streaming content.
|
| Fuck, even some technically illiterate people I know do
| this to watch various shows.
| immibis wrote:
| Every VPN I know is blocked by every geolocked platform I
| know. The IP geolocation APIs return a code indicating
| the IP is a VPN exit.
| homebrewer wrote:
| Internet censorship is the norm in large parts of the
| world, and VPNs are used by pretty much everyone I know,
| technically proficient or not.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It massively reduces the available torrent pools. That's not
| a niche thing. Also many trackers use udp.
|
| I'm thinking of moving to protonvpn.
| coppsilgold wrote:
| The Torrent uTP protocol (UDP) has hole-punching.
|
| There is an issue for torrents with so few peers that no
| one is connectable, and therefore there is no one to hole-
| punch for everyone else.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| How long has it been like that? I've been torrenting via
| Mullvad for a while and occasionally low-seed torrents take a
| while to initialize but eventually I get them. Sometimes it
| means thinking ahead a few days for media that's more niche.
| xelamonster wrote:
| Unless you were actively using port forwarding before it
| wouldn't be any different. If you need a VPN for your
| torrents, despite these faults I don't know of a better one
| myself. I use the Firefox VPN (which is Mullvad under the
| hood and it's worked at least as well if not better than any
| alternatives for me so far.
| trissi1996 wrote:
| I have my seedbox behind hideme vpn. They seem not that
| good privacy wise, but for torrenting that's not the main
| concern IMO.
|
| Port forwarding works and you can get a raw wireguard
| config to dockerize it.
|
| For general use in e.g. open hotspots I still use
| mullvad/mozilla vpn as I trust them more. (And can pay
| cashfor mullvad)
| mrbigbob wrote:
| Mullvad did away with port forwarding about 1.5 years ago.
| https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-the-support-for-
| forward.... If im not mistaken its not your ability to
| download the torrents that is effected but your ability to
| really upload the torrents. If you belong to a private
| tracker with a strict seeding to downloading ratio i would
| use another VPN service for that
| devwastaken wrote:
| Datacenters that allow port forwarding for VPNs are
| incentivized to monitor that traffic. there are no free
| lunches.
| switch007 wrote:
| Sad they're dropping openvpn - at least it's a year away.
|
| It works much better and more reliabily as a site-to-site VPN
| on my router for some reason.
| zahllos wrote:
| It looks like they are trying to tcp with wireguard:
| https://mullvad.net/en/blog/introducing-wireguard-over-
| tcp-a...
|
| I'm not sure if this can be done without the app or not.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I moved to airVpn. They have port forwarding and 3y is like 100
| euro
| krick wrote:
| What is the reason to drop openvpn? Honestly, I wouldn't even
| consider any provider that doesn't support it. Like what's even
| the point.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-openvpn-15th-
| january-20...
|
| Their reasoning is "they will be able to focus their
| resources where they can make a difference". Whatever that
| means.
| scdnc wrote:
| My only problem with Mullvad is that you get a lot more captchas
| and blocks from websites than you get from other VPNs.
| switch007 wrote:
| It's been bad for me lately. Basically persona non grata
|
| Many captchas are just bans but they are hoping for some free
| training
| zahllos wrote:
| A lot of their endpoints are rented or hosted from ASes that
| are well known, e.g. M247 Ltd. If I wanted to vastly reduce
| annoying VPN traffic, I'd simply block these ASes as well.
| That's likely the cause of these.
|
| There isn't a lot Mullvad can do about it. Not all providers
| of hosting are willing to tolerate VPN endpoints in the same
| way they don't like hosting tor exit nodes.
| switch007 wrote:
| Yeah I made sure to avoid those
| immibis wrote:
| hCaptcha seems to be increasing in popularity, have tasks
| that actually stump current bots, and not discriminate by IP
| address.
|
| reCAPTCHA is the GoDaddy of CAPTCHA services. It doesn't
| achieve its purpose and the CAPTCHA task is often just a time
| waster. It's already decided whether you're a bot or not -
| which is not based on your mouse movements, but rather your
| IP address reputation and whether you're signed into Google.
| It only still exists because of brand inertia. I'd like to
| see a Google executive put before Congress and forced to
| complete a reCAPTCHA over Tor.
| jijijijij wrote:
| Youtube and Reddit are the worst. I am pretty convinced the
| aggressive blocking is not because of abuse, but because VPNs
| _actually_ have become a problem for tracking and data mining.
|
| I have the suspicion the IP blocking is somewhat coordinated
| between Youtube and Reddit, to maximize annoyance and
| discourage VPN usage, since I frequently find exit server
| working for either one of them, but not both. Disrupting the
| ping pong of social media for VPN users, seems like an
| effective strategy to influence their behavior. And since they
| are natural monopolies respectively, they hardly risk
| alienating anyone doing so. Similar to how cookie banners are
| abused to modify people's sentiment on privacy regulations in
| favor of data mining. Even many tech people believe annoying
| cookie banners are the EU's fault, when common practice is
| either malicious compliance, unwarranted or straight illegal.
|
| That said, it _is_ actually fucking annoying. Then again, just
| a nuance in the greater enshittification and rapidly growing
| dissatisfaction with the web overall for me.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| VPNs are a great business these days, but I don't feel that they
| treat their customers properly, or that they're transparent about
| what they provide.
|
| My sense is that there's a lot of BS going on. Including the fact
| that "cool" VPNs are supposed to be coming from Scandinavian
| countries (but most of them aren't).
| bjoli wrote:
| I am a happy mullvad customer since about 5 years. I find it
| somewhat reassuring that they are not spending a gazillion
| dollars advertising on YouTube or affiliate websites.
|
| And of course prefer that they are in a jurisdiction that isn't
| a haven for shady companies.
|
| In short: I like them because there is little bullshit and they
| seem to be OK. I don't think I could ever trust PIA or all of
| those companies.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| They certainly spent a gazillion dollars advertising on every
| billboard and subway car in Manhattan.
| bookaway wrote:
| Yeah, this sort of stuff seems incredibly short-sighted. It
| gives me queasy "methinks the lady doth protest too much"
| ExpressVPN vibes.
| bjoli wrote:
| I didn't know about that, but they have this to say about
| it: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/advertising-that-targets-
| everyon...
|
| I never said I was against their AFK advertising. The EU
| chat control advertisement was great. The NYC stuff is
| pretty meh. Advertisement is was on my brain. I mostly
| treat it like that.
|
| I just find it weird that there seems to be so many
| companies spending a seemi gly infinite amount on affiliate
| advertisement (through bought reviews) and on influencer
| ads.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Yeah it's a mess as a consumer you have to verify that even the
| most basic things work. Years ago I was using Nord when I
| discovered that it was silently failing to actually connect me
| to the VPN despite showing I had connected, so I reported the
| issue and they told me not to worry it was a known issue. To my
| knowledge, they never issued any security disclosures.
| jwxz wrote:
| Funnily I had the opposite issue. I quit Nord and somehow I
| was still connected to the VPN. Luckily I caught it before I
| opened up anything personal.
|
| I occasionally run this just to make sure, especially when
| using an unfamiliar service: curl ipinfo.io
| healsdata wrote:
| I don't understand this comment. At best it's tangentially
| related, but it's also worded vaguely enough to sound like
| Mullvad (the topic of this post) is doing something bad.
|
| Mullvad states they're based on Sweden -- are you claiming they
| aren't? They list where all there servers are located and who
| owns them, if that's your concern.
|
| They seems to have extensive information about why you'd want
| to use a VPN or not. They don't log customer data and moved to
| a RAM-only infra. They're cheap with one flat rate.
|
| So what exactly would you call BS? What would you like to see
| them do different?
| Beijinger wrote:
| I have never use Mullvad VPN but I can give two recommendations:
|
| If money is no concern, use Astrill. Easy of software, number of
| countries, GFC, circumvent geoblocking, it is one of the best, if
| not the best, but it comes with a big price tag attached. I think
| 300 USD/2 years if I remember correctly.
|
| If you don't need the best, AirVPN has often deals for 50USD/2
| years. But the servers are very "spammy" (tons of captchas for
| you to solve).
| phartenfeller wrote:
| Why do you think Astrill is one of the best? And why do you
| think it is better than Mullvad?
|
| I trust Mullvad because it does security audits like this. And
| it stores no data and has a history of police showing up
| without any data compromised [1].
|
| [1] https://mullvad.net/en/blog/mullvad-vpn-was-subject-to-a-
| sea...
| Beijinger wrote:
| Astill works on most OS, software is extremely slick, has
| many servers, at my time even Mainland china IPs were
| possible. Works reliable in China, is often NOT detected as a
| VPN (geo-blocking, Banks, captchas). They even offer fixed IP
| addresses, if desired. If you ask why would you have a fixed
| ip address and if this does not contradict the idea of a VPN
| you may have little international experience and don't
| understand the different applications of a VPN. Hey, there
| may be people that give a f... about the privacy it offers
| because they have totally different applications.
|
| If you want a Mercedes of VPNs, likely Astrill is the choice.
| If privacy is your main concern, there are many options. Dont
| mistake privacy for anonymity. If in doubt, pay with Bitcoin
| and use TOR to connect to your VPN.
|
| For my current application, AirVPN is more than enough. Two
| years: are 79 EUR, if they have a special, it is 49 euro. If
| you are cost sensitive, Mullvad is double the price already,
| but at least only less than half of the Astrill price.
| Black616Angel wrote:
| Please don't give recommendations.
|
| Mullvad has had multiple public audits and even contributed to
| other security-related open source projects. You don't have to
| create an account and they even take cash by mail. It can't be
| more anonymous than that.
|
| Astrill on the other hand has had no public audits, and costs
| more than twice as much. It is not worth the price, since their
| security can't be checked by normal users. Also they require an
| account. Furthermore even in their FAQ they don't say that they
| wouldn't give the data to a court. They ask the question, but
| don't really answer it.
|
| I would never buy a VPN from a company like that.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Please don't give judgements if you dont have an idea what
| are you talking about.
|
| Just use the best programming language. Ups? For what
| application? Yes, everything depends on the application.
| Honestly, I doubt that many VPNs are better then Astrill if
| it comes to the GFC. I mentioned, it comes at a price. But if
| you are price sensitive, Mullvad is still nearly double the
| price of AirVPN....
|
| "Mullvad has had multiple public audits and even contributed
| to other security-related open source projects."
|
| Well, airvpn has also interesting roots.
| https://airvpn.org/aboutus/
|
| "You don't have to create an account, and they even take cash
| by mail. It can't be more"
|
| Well, I dont think any of my recommendations takes cash by
| mail, but that may take bitcoin. And for the applications you
| are hinting at, it is much more important that you connect
| via Tor to your VPN. One thing gives anonymity, the other
| privacy.
|
| "Furthermore even in their FAQ they don't say that they
| wouldn't give the data to a court."
|
| ROTFL. Every company will give data, or the data they have,
| to a court. At least in their own jurisdiction. Yet, there
| are (or were) VPNs that were cyberspace only. No corporation,
| just a website. A business that is not incorporated and only
| exits in cyberspace may indeed have a lot of leverage. At
| this point, you may ask yourself what you are doing. But if
| it is really so important, I would start setting up my own
| servers and selling my own VPNs. A tree you can hide best in
| a Forrest.
|
| "I would never buy a VPN from a company like that." If
| everything you have is a hammer, every problem becomes a
| nail. Everything depends on your application and what you
| want to achieve.
| seanw444 wrote:
| It's nice to see confirmation that Mullvad isn't smoke and
| mirrors. It's the only VPN I use. It's pretty much guaranteed
| that if you go looking, you're going to find vulnerabilities.
| They took it seriously and fixed it immediately, which is
| reassuring. I'll continue using Mullvad.
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