I find this stuff interesting. It’s real distinction from Mullvad seems to be its “decentralized” model. Best I can tell, anyone can set up a server, stake some crypto collateral, and act as a link server in return for a share of pay.
While I think this model can work, my fear is that it’s subject to the same vulnerability as the Tor network - If the five eyes control a big portion of nodes (and given they’re profitable to run, why wouldn’t they do this?), then they can follow your traffic easily.
Chances are, like with Tor, that this fear is a bit overblown. But it’s very hard to know. I think the model (anyone can run a server) does have its own, probably equal weaknesses, compared to a single name (eg Mullvad) who stand to lose their entire business the second they’re suspected to be giving up data to authorities.
Well, it’s basically what Tor does, just with extra hops. So the vulnerability is still the same, but you’re trading off higher cost/lower speed for mitigating the risk somewhat.
Many VPNs (including Mullvad) do this “noise packets”/size hiding encryption thing. That’s good, but not unique.
That’s kind of what I meant. Implementing both of those things together on a VPN is unique AFAIK.
I would imagine if you could trust the entry node that would also mitigate a significant amount of risk, no? I’m not deeply knowledgeable on the subject just FYI
https://nym.com/
I find this stuff interesting. It’s real distinction from Mullvad seems to be its “decentralized” model. Best I can tell, anyone can set up a server, stake some crypto collateral, and act as a link server in return for a share of pay.
While I think this model can work, my fear is that it’s subject to the same vulnerability as the Tor network - If the five eyes control a big portion of nodes (and given they’re profitable to run, why wouldn’t they do this?), then they can follow your traffic easily.
Chances are, like with Tor, that this fear is a bit overblown. But it’s very hard to know. I think the model (anyone can run a server) does have its own, probably equal weaknesses, compared to a single name (eg Mullvad) who stand to lose their entire business the second they’re suspected to be giving up data to authorities.
This feature is unique to nym as well, as far as I’m aware:
https://nym.com/mixnet
Well, it’s basically what Tor does, just with extra hops. So the vulnerability is still the same, but you’re trading off higher cost/lower speed for mitigating the risk somewhat.
Many VPNs (including Mullvad) do this “noise packets”/size hiding encryption thing. That’s good, but not unique.
That’s kind of what I meant. Implementing both of those things together on a VPN is unique AFAIK.
I would imagine if you could trust the entry node that would also mitigate a significant amount of risk, no? I’m not deeply knowledgeable on the subject just FYI
Ah, I see, yeah I’m not aware of others doing both at once. I do think it’s a decent security model.
And yep, the big deal is controlling entry+exit gateways. Trusting those will always be the fundamental risk point in VPNs.