I'm also interested in this. I cannot help but wonder if the reason is 'because they gave us money to', like Firefox 'partnering' with google to make google search the default provider.
The white paper won't be read by everybody and shouldn't be targeted at everybody, but it will be read by the most knowledgeable folks and be a source of confidence that filters out to everyone else.
This all depends on there actually being an audit -- so far the landing page doesn't even say that! From the text on the page there's no way to tell if Mozilla just read the published policies for a bunch of VPNs and made a recommendation, or has an employee embedded in ProtonVPN's security team and a seat on the board, or somewhere in between. Without knowing the details, it's hard for me to say whether I'm looking for more documentation of the audit that already happened, or a stronger actual relationship behind the endorsement.
The section from the "About" page of Tesonet (26 Apr 2018)[3], which was suddenly removed in June 2018 after the connection between ProtonVPN and Tesonet was made public by the co-founder of PIA[4]:
"For the latest project, Tesonet is working together with an international brand from Switzerland to create a security product that helps users protect their network traffic. As part of this technical partnership, we are collaborating on datacenter and network infrastructure that can easily supply 10 Gbps worth of bandwidth to users around the world. The product is developed using the latest authentication encryption methods and the best practices in the security world."
As late as September 2018, NordVPN and ProtonVPN still become affected by the same extremely rare Windows security bugs at the same time[5], even though the CTO of ProtonMail claimed here on Hacker News, that they used Tesonet, a data mining company, for developing ProtonVPN, a free VPN service, only as "an office space provider"[6].
[1] http://litigation.maxval-ip.com/Litigation/DetailView?CaseID...
[2] http://fortune.com/2015/05/29/hola-luminati-vpn/
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20180426161609/https://tesonet.c...
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17258203
[5] https://www.pcmag.com/news/363619/protonvpn-and-nordvpn-bugs...
> Everyone in Vilnius, Lithuania knows, that both, NordVPN and ProtonVPN, are being developed here by the people related to Tesonet
This is not true. Proton has staff in Geneva, Zurich, Skopje, Vilnius, and San Francisco. Years ago, we did sublease office space from Tesonet (one of the biggest IT firms in Vilnius) as alleged above, but there is no connection today.
ProtonVPN is fully developed (and owned) by Proton Technologies AG, the Swiss company that also operates ProtonMail. This can be verified in the Swiss commercial registry, which also lists all our directors: http://ge.ch/hrcintapp/externalCompanyReport.action?companyO...
3 and 4 are the only things I can see with any weight to them, yet they were brought up by a competitor (red flag), and vague enough not to be considered "evidence".
5 and 6 prove absolutely nothing. Both of these products use OpenVPN, which is what the vulnerability was in.
The vulnerability has nothing to do with Tesonet and I have not seen proof otherwise. Presumably other VPN services that also use OpenVPN could have encountered the same vulnerabilities. What makes you think that both having the same bug, because they use the same open-source system, is any kind of "proof"?
It's interesting how one can seem to provide a huge body of quotes and evidence for something- yet the majority of it easily deflates when viewed directly. We're gonna need more than this, much more. I'm not willing to 100% disbelieve you or dismiss your concerns outright- but if you're trying to convince people, this is a pretty weak effort.
You've made these claims before, you say ProtonMail's response is inadequate- could you elaborate on why? I thought it was relatively thorough and convincing, but am willing to see any holes poked in it
- ProtonVPN UAB lists Tesonet's CEO as a director [after: the company's name was changed multiple times in 2 months, and the director's name was hidden from the public view]
- ProtonVPN UAB is operated from Tesonet's HQ in Vilnius, Lithuania [after: the company's address was changed to a co-working space's located a few streets away, which doesn't require to relocate to use it]
- ProtonVPN UAB uses previous Tesonet's technical employees [after: still true]
- ProtonVPN uses IP address blocks that belong to Tesonet [after: these IP address blocks were assigned to ProtonVPN]
- ProtonVPN Android mobile app was signed by Tesonet [after: still true]
The ProtonMail's response on reddit was modified multiple times and locked, to prevent people from picking the holes in the narrative.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17258203 ["showdead" must be enabled in settings to see the entire thread]
There are even photos from Mozilla's visit to Proton HQ in Geneva: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpR7ungAi6Y/
Proton does have an office in Vilnius (one of 6 offices globally), but the bulk of our staff works in our two Swiss offices.
Is Tesonet's CEO still the director of ProtonVPN UAB, more than 2 years after the incorporation in July 2016? I can no longer check it myself, because the public record is now hidden. But it was still true in June 2018.
And how do you feel about partnering on a free VPN service with a company, which has been sued for multiple patent infringements in "Large-scale web data extraction products and services with residential proxy network" by the founders of another free VPN service, HolaVPN, who have publicly admitted to using it for exactly that?
These are nothing but facts backed by sources anyone can verify by himself.
I agree overall about the benefits of getting more reliable auditing for VPNs, I think that's important and I'd like to see Mozilla release more details.
But I strongly disagree with the "shifting trust" explanation that people use when they talk about VPNs. People bring up this point all the time, that if you can't guarantee trustworthiness, there's no benefit. And it's ridiculous -- even a moderately trustworthy VPN is a benefit over not using a VPN.
VPNs consolidate trust. When you don't use a VPN, you aren't just showing your traffic to your ISP. You're also leaking your IP address to any website you visit. You're also trusting any other networks that you connect to when you open up your laptop in a coffee shop or hotel room not to have a sniffer sitting on them. You're trusting tons of faceless organizations across the entire chain of you to the website you visit to be safe with your data.
The main benefit of a VPN is not just that it hides your data from your ISP (although that alone is a really good benefit because we already know that most US ISPs are untrustworthy). The main benefit is that you only need to trust one company with your IP address instead of every single individual website that you visit, and that you only need to trust one provider not to sniff your traffic, instead of every single ISP that you connect to.
If your VPN is moderately trustworthy, to the same level that you would trust an ISP like Verizon, then it is a strict upgrade in security to use that VPN for all of your traffic, because you're eliminating some of the lowest-hanging network vulnerabilities while you travel and putting a barrier between yourself and the websites you visit so that it's at least slightly harder for them to track you or tie you to a physical location.
As opposed to leaking your VPN's IP address, which is about as meaningful.
> You're also trusting any other networks that you connect to when you open up your laptop in a coffee shop or hotel room not to have a sniffer sitting on them.
True. Which is why a personal VPN to your home network is useful.
> You're trusting tons of faceless organizations across the entire chain of you to the website you visit to be safe with your data.
The connection from the VPN provider still goes through a similar chain.
It's true that the chain will be substantially different if you, say, connect to a service in the US from the UK via an Australian VPN service. On the other hand, the chain will be way longer if you use that Australian VPN to look up your local pizza place's menu.
Unless you're very lucky with providers, your local IP address is good enough for me to get at least your zip code, and if you're particularly unlucky with your provider/network setup there are theoretical attacks that can be used to get even closer to your physical location[0].
By comparison, the closest VPN address to my physical location is in a different state. That really matters if you care about privacy -- without a VPN you are broadcasting your current town to literally every single site you visit.
> The connection from the VPN provider still goes through a similar chain.
But when it goes through that chain, the request is sent from the VPN provider, not from your own IP address, which is significantly more unique and easier to track, even if you've taken steps to block browser fingerprinting. Request aggregation is by no means a perfect defense against tracking, but it is significantly better than not aggregating requests.
> Which is why a personal VPN to your home network is useful.
Granted. If you've set up a personal VPN to your home network and you're maintaining your own server to make that work, that'll protect you when you browse at a coffee shop. It's also a lot more work for the average user (it's certainly not a viable substitute for what Firefox is doing here), and if done incorrectly a home VPN can make your network vulnerable to attacks because it forces you to open ports.
So my suggestion if you're going down that route would be to buy a 3rd-party server on something like Linode and set up your VPN there. That way a poorly configured server won't make your home network vulnerable. That will also protect you from at least the geolocation attacks I mentioned above. You won't have the advantage of sharing an IP with other people, but I can see that being an acceptable tradeoff for people who want more control.
At that point though, you've basically just rolled your own private VPN provider. You can debate whether or not it's better to roll your own provider or use an existing provider, but in either case, you're still using a VPN. Because VPNs are strict upgrade to network security for most people.
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/04/getting-warmer-a...
I'm curious how this bleeds over into support of ProtonVPN.
If it helps however, ProtonVPN is by the people behind ProtonMail, the security-first email provider. They started in CERN as a mission to provide email to scientists that wouldn't be subject to censorship.
Their entire business - email and VPN both - embodies the same philosophy that Mozilla does.
It's rare that I trust any company but Mozilla and ProtonMail are two of a _very_ short list.
ProtonMail doesn't report security vulnerabilities to the users, when researchers discover them[1]. It has also publicly boasted about hacking a phishing site, when claimed the journalist's report was based on "unsubstantiated rumors"[2]. I really hope that it has nothing to do with the philosophy Mozilla embodies.
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/07/protonmail_fail_jav...
[2] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvvke7/email-prov...
If you use a laptop, it would rather be: "I'm no longer trusting [home ISP] + [workplace's IT staff] + [workplace ISP] + [family I'm visiting's ISP] + [cellular service provider] + [train station hotspot] not to sell my data, I'm now trusting SketchyVPN".
Mozilla Foundation is non-profit but Mozilla Corporation is for profit. I don't know how that would affect your opinion but it certainly did when I found that that out recently when I wanted to know how much they were paid by search engines.
> For VPN service, I trust Mozilla more than to just about anybody: they're nonprofit, have clear and transparent governance, have many mission-driven employees, and would lose more than they could possibly gain by breaking the terms of service on a VPN.
It seems to me that none of these are reasons to trust either Mozilla or ProtonVPN. The reason to trust Firefox is that it is free software (free as in freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify). If you don't like what Firefox is doing, you have the permission you need to change your copy, or hire someone to vet and/or change the copy you run, and you can help others by distributing your improved version. The seeds of coming to trust Firefox are in its software freedom, not in any public relations effort or perception about Mozilla's employees.
So there's nothing about Firefox that compels you to trust or use ProtonVPN. The limits of how trustworthy you want to make Firefox are up to you individually and other Firefox hackers collectively.
I'm excited because VPNs are all about shifting trust: I'm no longer trusting Comcast not to sell my data, I'm now trusting SketchyVPN. If SketchyVPN turns out not to be trustworthy, then I'm paying for something that is worth less than $0 to me, and there's no way to detect that as a user. It's like paying more for organic food in a town where farm stands are paid to lace organic food with arsenic -- why would you?
For VPN service, I trust Mozilla more than to just about anybody: they're nonprofit, have clear and transparent governance, have many mission-driven employees, and would lose more than they could possibly gain by breaking the terms of service on a VPN. They also have a big enough profile that it takes no extra effort to stay up to date on how trustworthy they are -- they do make missteps, but every misstep hits the front page of HN, which is exactly what I want. If they run a VPN, I'm sold that it's worth more than $0.
But the service isn't fully baked yet for me, because they're not explaining how they're enforcing the trustworthiness of ProtonVPN. I have no idea if ProtonVPN is as trustworthy as Mozilla -- maybe it is, but I don't want to learn and stay on top of that. Instead I want premium.firefox.com/vpn/ to convince me that, if I use Mozilla's service, I'm fully benefiting from their trustworthiness.