trailofbits / algo

Set up a personal VPN in the cloud
https://blog.trailofbits.com/2016/12/12/meet-algo-the-vpn-that-works/
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Just a question about security and anonymity of algo #1722

Open tamlthari opened 4 years ago

tamlthari commented 4 years ago

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. A clear and concise description of what the problem is. Ex. I'm always frustrated when [...]

Will an attack on the cloud provider EC2 instance compromise the traffic? In other words, if the cloud provider is to hand over the EC2 instance storage, will my browsing history be exposed? Amazon is this case the ISP, does that mean Amazon can see my traffic? You said anonymity is not provided, what do you mean by that, isn't that the point of using VPN? My end IP is always constant, is this what you mean by anonymity may not be guaranteed?

TC1977 commented 4 years ago

I can't find a good link at the moment (perhaps the Algo release announcement would help), so here's a quick answer from a non-expert. There are three goals that are "the point of using VPN."

Security - no one can read your data Privacy - no one can track where you've been Anonymity - no one can find out who you are

Algo is Secure (although WireGuard is a work in progress), even from your cloud provider, as long as the private keys and CA certificate are kept safe. (Not on your Algo server - see below).

Private, especially if you enable ad-blocking except that you're trusting Cloudflare by default with your DNS request history. But there may not be a better option.

NOT Anonymous - your requests are coming from a static IP, which can be easily traced to your cloud provider. So you can't use it to get around any service provider (Netflix) that understands geoblocking. Also your cloud provider knows who you are through your credit card, and will comply with any government subpoena, including turning over your Algo server, and the contents.