How was the EarthVPN user identified, and do you protect against this?

[Anoniker 0]

Hello Air Admins,

 

Can you please review the following article that mentions an EarthVPN user being identified?

 

https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/8383/earthvpn-user-arrested-cops-find-logs/

 

Now, assuming that your staff will vigorously investigate and analyze any breach of any of your competitors services (and this is safe to assume, otherwise your policies should be called into question), can you please describe how this user would have been identified if, as the article explains, EarthVPN, like AirVPN, keeps no logs?

 

Having explained your analysis of the above situation, can you please assure your users and potential users that you are not susceptible to the same weakness?

 

Thanks

[st4r 1]

AFAIK airvpn uses shared IPs on every server which makes the potential logging of the local datacenter irrelevant as they should be unable to connect any activity with an individual user (multiple users use the same IP address). however I am glad to hear the staff's position on this.

[Zaroad 26]

Related topic: https://airvpn.org/topic/10048-voxility-and-other-data-centre-logging/

 

Lol LeaseWeb

[Anoniker 0]

 

Related topic: https://airvpn.org/topic/10048-voxility-and-other-data-centre-logging/

 

Lol LeaseWeb

 

 

The staff responded to that question with bit of a non-answer. That is very concerning.

 

Instead of directly answering the question:

 

"Have you heard anything about this, and can you tell me how it affects AirVPN's server in Bucharest? Also, if this is a repeated occurrence in data centres where VPN servers are hosted, doesn't it render irrelevant the VPN providers' promises not to log users' activities?"

 

The answer was along the lines of:

 

"In case of any suspicion of any kind, or anyway in case of critical data transmissions, perform partition of trust"

 

 

Performing partition of trust is fine, but that doesn't address the main issue, which is, given an analysis of the situation, what happened to the EarthVPN user, and could this happen to an AirVPN user?

 

I don't want to put words in the staff's mouth, but with the response above indicating that partition of trust is a good idea as a response to a straight question, it is kind of an affirmation that AirVPN users are susceptible to whatever identified the EarthVPN user.

 

AirVPN staff, please comment.

[wakaflockaflame 5]

The fact is AirVPN has absolutely no control over the datacentres they use. It is a matter of trust, just as you must trust AirVPN themselves. I can only imagine AirVPN look into the datacentres they use as much as they can, but at the end of the day it would be impossible for them to know if a datacentre is logging unless they own the datacentre themselves. Even the massive VPNs like PIA do not own the datacentres. The only one I know of that does is VyperVPN.

[iwih2gk 93]

Surely you realize that ownership is not the issue.  A powerful adversary (especially with Gov authorization) can sit outside of any locked down server (VPN or otherwise) and monitor all IP's connecting.  Over time; basic traffic analysis allows them to be fairly certain where you are going.  The server owner may not even be aware that his server is being monitored so trusting him is moot in some ways.  Of course you want to have trust in Air and I do, but they cannot control who watches and monitors from the outside.  Air can and DOES I believe monitor who can watch from the "inside".  Those are two completely different things.  The partition of trust that we preach about adds a great deal of difficulty to the "watch from the outside" equation.  A couple of VPN's followed by TOR are considered critical mass level to an adversary.  This has been discussed several times in this forum.

[wakaflockaflame 5]

To add to what iwih2gk said, many intelligence agencies around the world currently perform bulk data collection by directly tapping fibre optic cables. It is wise to look up the privacy situation in the country you are connecting to on the VPN.

 

For example, I'd connect to a US server to watch a bigger Netflix library, but I'd also assume by default that the NSA is probably capturing as much data as it can and large datacentres are almost certainly one of their specific primary targets.

 

A similar threat exists in the UK, as GCHQ does the exact same thing through the TEMPORA program. This stores both metadata and actual content of communications, so I can only assume it has co-operation from big companies like Facebook and Google, else it would merely see an SSL connection to a particular domain. Certainly not a place to route your traffic to if you want privacy.

 

So if I wanted privacy I would connect to a Swiss server due to their extremely strict data protection laws and the fact they are famously neutral - so they are not a member of the EU or the Five Eyes.

 

I am not sure about the intelligence services in Italy where AirVPN is based, but Italy is not a member of the Five Eyes so I can only assume any data collection that does go on is only looking into their own citizens. And as far as I am aware - and if you know better, please correct me - the Italian authorities cannot impose gagging orders as the US and UK can.

 

But the bottom line for any VPN service is this. Even if you can place 100% trust in the provider itself, you need to take into account the policies of not only the third party datacentres it works with, but the governments of the countries in which those datacentres reside. It would be trivially easy for the NSA to tap a datacentre commonly used by VPNs without even the datacentre itself knowing, let alone a VPN provider renting servers within it. So if you want privacy from a VPN, connect to a country that takes privacy seriously. This is why almost all my VPN use is to Swiss servers, unless I am want to access US Netflix on my dedicated media setup that has no private info going through it.

[Staff 9972]

@wakaflockaflame
 

Hello,

 

just as a side note (quite irrelevant for the core of the important arguments you raise) we would like to add that you can access Netflix USA from Swiss servers (provided that your system queries the VPN DNS server).

 

Kind regards

[wakaflockaflame 5]

Hey @Staff that's awesome, thanks.