Intro to VPNs

Presented at Ada Developers Academy

Transcript

1. INTRO TO VPNS LORAINE KANERVISTO @LORAINEKV THEY / THEM
2. INTRO TO VPNS WHAT’S A VPN? ▸ Virtual Private Network ▸ Like a secret tunnel for your traffic. Helps ensure the privacy and security of your messages and their destinations ▸ Remote network of computers that handle your traffic from point to point ▸ A VPN does not give you total anonymity
3. WHY DO PEOPLE USE VPNS? ▸ To get around geo-restrictions for entertainment (gaming, Netflix, etc) ▸ To get around government browsing restrictions ▸ To prevent third parties from monitoring traffic (governments, ISPs, advertisers) ▸ Employees of a company use it to connect to internal networks and view files securely. Resources that cannot be viewed publicly (web services, file stores, etc) ▸ Securing traffic when using public WiFi ▸ Piracy / torrenting INTRO TO VPNS
4. WHY DO I USE VPNS? ▸ https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/22/dreamhost-vs-justice- department-excludes-request-ip-addresses/ ▸ https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/internet- privacy/trump-and-congress-complain-about-surveillance- want-enable ▸ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/isps-wont- have-to-follow-new-rule-that-protects-your-data-from- theft/ INTRO TO VPNS
5. HOW IS IT PRIVATE? ▸ ISPs will only see your outbound connections to your VPN (rather than to your destination web services) ▸ Destination web services only log an IP address from your VPN (rather than your own IP address) ▸ Your VPN service is (hopefully) not logging or misusing your traffic INTRO TO VPNS
6. HOW IS IT SECURE? ▸ Users must first authenticate before connecting to a VPN - it is not open to the public ▸ Traffic is encrypted from point to point. Both commercial and free VPNs use a variety of tunneling protocols and encryption methods. ▸ Messages intercepted by snoopy parties should be encrypted INTRO TO VPNS
7. COMMERCIAL VPN CONSIDERATIONS ▸ Cost ▸ Security ▸ Logging ▸ Jurisdiction ▸ Bandwidth limits ▸ Speed ▸ VPN traffic obfuscation ▸ Server location availability ▸ Payment / sign up anonymity ▸ Legitimacy of business claims - auditing? https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-glossary/ INTRO TO VPNS
8. DIY VPN CONSIDERATIONS ▸ Technical overhead for set up ▸ Ongoing maintenance and updates ▸ Cost of resources (should be cheaper than commercial) ▸ Less *frills* - mobile client, multi server availability (unless you set that up too) ▸ Better performance since you’re not sharing resources ▸ Less risky since you’re not relying on a commercial party INTRO TO VPNS
9. LET’S BUILD ONE! ▸ Algo VPN: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo INTRO TO VPNS