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Alphabet's Cybersecurity Group Touts Its New Open Source Private VPN (digitalocean.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Alphabet's cybersecurity division Jigsaw has designed a new open source private VPN aimed at journalists and the people sending them data. "Their work makes them more vulnerable to attack," said Santiago Andrigo, Jigsaw's product manager. "It can get really scary when they're outed and you're passing over information."
Unscrupulous VPN providers can steal your identity, peek in on your data, inject their own ads on non-secure pages, or analyze your browsing habits and sell that information to advertisers, says one Jigsaw official. And you can't know for sure whether you can trust them, no matter what they say in the app store. "Journalists should be aware that their online activities might be subject to surveillance either by government agencies, their internet service providers or a hacker with malicious intent," said Laura Tich, technical evangelist for Code for Africa, a resource for African journalists. "As surveillance becomes ubiquitous in today's world, journalists face an increasing challenge in establishing secure communication in the digital space."
The new private VPN, dubbed "Outline", is specifically designed to be resistant to censorship — because it's harder to detect as a VPN (and therefore is less likely to be blocked). Outline uses an encrypted socks5 proxy that looks like normal internet traffic. Once the user chooses a server location, Outline spins up a DigitalOcean server on Ubuntu, installs Docker, and imports an image of the actual server.
It's been named Outline because in places where internet use may be restricted — it gives you a line out.
Unscrupulous VPN providers can steal your identity, peek in on your data, inject their own ads on non-secure pages, or analyze your browsing habits and sell that information to advertisers, says one Jigsaw official. And you can't know for sure whether you can trust them, no matter what they say in the app store. "Journalists should be aware that their online activities might be subject to surveillance either by government agencies, their internet service providers or a hacker with malicious intent," said Laura Tich, technical evangelist for Code for Africa, a resource for African journalists. "As surveillance becomes ubiquitous in today's world, journalists face an increasing challenge in establishing secure communication in the digital space."
The new private VPN, dubbed "Outline", is specifically designed to be resistant to censorship — because it's harder to detect as a VPN (and therefore is less likely to be blocked). Outline uses an encrypted socks5 proxy that looks like normal internet traffic. Once the user chooses a server location, Outline spins up a DigitalOcean server on Ubuntu, installs Docker, and imports an image of the actual server.
It's been named Outline because in places where internet use may be restricted — it gives you a line out.
Yeah, trust the largest data mining and advertising company in the world to keep your data private... NOT.
"Unscrupulous VPN providers can steal your identity, peek in on your data, inject their own ads on non-secure pages, or analyze your browsing habits and sell that information to advertisers ..."
So, Alphabet is talking about themselves, right?
private virtual private network, eh?
Were that I say, pancakes?
Re: "Now users can create their own personal VPN to their own personal server" -- Defeats one of the main features of a VPN, i.e. anonymity. The whole point of VPNs & TOR is to bury sensitive information in a haystack of other encrypted traffic to make it harder to find. Also, if national security agencies are tracking journalists, they'll do it with targeted techniques, rendering VPNs & TOR ineffective. I'll wait till I hear about this from independent security experts about what real world problems it actually solves or not.
"Maybe if they keep seeing Private, they'll think it provides privacy."
The data kraken offering to keep our communication and maybe even identity a secret?
Thanks, but I'm waiting for the NSA to announce a joint-venture with the FSB, Mossad and China, to get my VPN from!
If you have you own (or event shared with other people) server where you can login via SSH, you don't need any other VPN software. Just start ssh session to it with dynamic forwarding and use it as Socks5 proxy.
Any cheap server on Digital Ocean, Amazon or elsewhere would do as long as you reasonable sure that it is located in the country which don't track you.
Of course, openssh has more elaborate VPN soulution built in, but it requires administrative rights on both ends of link. And dynamic port forwarding works by default as long as you have ssh client (putty would do) which supports it, and you can tune proxy settings in your browser.
It sounds like Google has reinvented obfsproxy, which disguises your traffic to look like innocuous requests. People have been plugging obfsproxy into Tor and OpenVPN for years now.
You mean, like Google?
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
Google, and by extension, Alphabet, joined the US PRISM surveillance program in 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Good people go to bed earlier.
Let me guess, they replaced it with a big red dot on a white background?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So-called Buddhist nations (though that one's more Shinto than Buddhist) aren't known for being particularly Buddhist.
The Nazis rotated it precisely to be different to the religious symbol.
No, they didn't; you're just repeating nonsense someone once told you without bothering to check it. The swastika has been used by various religions in many different styles, and in both orientations.
Yep, doing this right now. Though, instead of a cheap battery powered router I've got a Lynksis WRT 1900. Those little ones are OK for when you need to move around a lot, but they tend to be slow and somewhat limited.
Wikipedia says this:
The swastika is a geometrical figure and an ancient religious icon from the cultures of Eurasia, where it has been and remains a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Indian religions.
A lot of them are. It's just that that actual Buddhism practice is mostly stuck in the monasteries. Most people only go to the temples mostly to wish for something rather than seek enlightenment or guidance.
Wait, what? I'm a gaijin living in Japan and every single map that I have seen uses the swastika (or manji) to mark temples. I just took a look at Google Maps, and it does the same. Also, the manji faces counter-clockwise, and the Nazi swastika was clockwise (and rotated 45).
Seriously, it would me really angry if they had to drop a centuries old symbol due to tourists' ignorance.
"Unscrupulous VPN providers can steal your identity, peek in on your data, inject their own ads on non-secure pages, or analyze your browsing habits and sell that information to advertisers ..."
Each use case is a little different. Someone in an oppressive country might be trying to get access to much needed news. Another just wants to stream Netflix without AT&T or Verizon from throttling their feed. While yet another wants to remain anonymous for less than honorable reasons. Each case needs their VPN to protect them from different types of intrusion. No one VPN will cover every use case. That's why I do my research at That One Privacy Site I don't know if the information there is all legit but it is mighty thorough. Everything from is the VPN located in a 5 eyes nation down to the ethics of whether they prevent SPAM.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I retested this today, just to confirm what I already know. China and their Great Firewall have been able to automatically detect and block Shadowsocks for a long time. The concept of wrapping a VPN client and server into a nice UI is very good, but you'll need much much more than this to accomplish your goal. Seriously, am I very disappointed with Google/Alphabet - you have the resources and ability to change the internet, but you won't do it because privacy would break your business model. Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Sergey Brin - you should be ashamed.
The only real problem with the Swastika is a corrupt German government has failed to rehabilitate the swastika, and in the most arrogant fashion chose it ban it in human context
Um, what exactly do you think Germany could have done post-WW2 to make the Swastika not have negative connotations in western countries?
The CIA just had a communications debacle exposed concerning its information assets in various countries worldwide, causing a roll up of those assets, even the deaths of dozens of those assets at the hands of their countries' security apparatuses. This sounds like something they could use after some modifications.
E Proelio Veritas.
These comments always amuse me.
Trust me, if Google was the evil you think they are, they'd be doing a much better job of it. They're not nearly that incompetent. (No, seriously. If Google was trying to be evil you'd be way more screwed and not even realise it, but this applies to most large corporations.. There are only a few I'd class as truly evil, Google isn't even close to getting on that list. Naive, narrow sighted, culturally tone deaf, sure)