Comrade Major will bypass VPN

Why are free anonymizers will not help you hide and which methods are better

Metric Labs, having studied the most popular VPNs available for free download in Google and Apple stores, was surprised to find that 60% of the programs at the head of the list were either created by Chinese programmers or belong to Chinese companies. I admit that the ordinary Western consumer, brought up in the spirit of internationalism, is not about Chinese heredity, but you can’t come up with a worst recommendation for a professional in the field of digital security.

In January 2017, the Celestial Party and its government launched the harsh “cleaning” of services that attempted to “national digital sovereignty”.

The main blow fell on individuals and companies that provide unconscious citizens with the VPN service. After the livestock compulsory registration - read: the introduction of backdors in the program code that opens free access to the private data of users - a handful of disagreements was indicatively punished and withdrawn from the game.

Entrepreneur Wu Syanyan, who nourished 8 thousand foreign citizens and 5 thousand legal entities since 2013, received 74 thousand dollars of a fine and five years of imprisonment on the bunk.

You might think that the Chinese campaign of the fight against the VPN is aimed at the courage of the population from visiting prohibited sites (of which three quarters of the world Internet in China).

However, it seems to me that the struggle against unconscious citizens in the country of genetic consciousness is a tenth matter. It is much more important for the party and the government, obsessed with fear of the technological lag behind the West, to obtain control over the information flows of this very West.

Monitoring supposedly private VPN, the Chinese state turns into the second Google,

With the only advantage that everyone in a row uses the search engine, and the VPN is installed, as a rule, only those who have something to hide.

Secretly, by the traffic of Western users who bought on the free status of popular VPN applications in the Google Play Store and Apple Itunes Store, the Chinese authorities can both independently use the received data and sell them to competitors if users of Chinese VPN services work in Western corporations and accidentally break off valuable information.

The question arises: what do we, citizens of the Russian Federation, are to the point that private traffic will fall into the hands of the Chinese authorities? Moreover, not only Chinese VPNs pose a potential threat of data leakage, but, for example, American, in the jurisdiction of which after 9/11 many legislative loopholes were created that open access to formally private information (where we went, what we looked, etc.).

We do not care about the Chinese and Americans, the main thing is that our digital adventures do not fall into the hands of his native Roskomnadzor. Isn't it? I'm afraid that not so.

However, there is no need to spend time proof of a banal apotheme, that free cheese happens only in mousetraps. It is more productive to deal with the question on the merits: "Do we need VPN in principle?"

The vast majority of Runet users are convinced that the VPN will provide them with three important “covers”.

• Firstly, it will allow you to visit sites from the black list of Roskomnadzor. It was not that it was painful, but it is worthless when someone else's uncle decides for you that you can watch and read, and what is impossible.

• Secondly, the VPN promises to hide network activity. It’s not that it was painful now, but for the future, it will come in handy. You never know what will happen next, what we will be tied to, which another “VKontakte” will let us down under Suma (or worse).

• Thirdly, the VPN promises us the main nirvan of the Soviet (and post-Soviet) person-anonymity. In alarming societies, the more inconspicuous, the longer you last.

The paradox, however, is that for all the listed VPN tasks, either not entirely needed or useless. To visit the forbidden sites, the VPN is redundant because there is enough simple proxy server, or without unnecessary trouble-Opera or Tor browser.

The concealment of network activity is a thing, of course, useful, but it in no way ensures anonymity, because if desired, our anonymity is very simple to reveal from a completely different side.

Nobody will torment you with a soldering iron if you are anonymous and inconspicuously somewhere there on the network.

The state according to the sharaban is nameless and no interesting statistical units. It is only important to the state that you do not bay the brains of others and do not raise an extra wave (“not wake up low passions,” as the poet would say).

However, it is worth it somewhere publicly “wrong” to speak out, to collect the audience and-most importantly! -To cause a dangerous public outcry, as the state will be interested in you and quickly “overcome” your anonymity, as I said, from another side: not through your IP address hidden VPN, but through your social ties.

There is a rule in cryptography: you can not use the most reliable encryption algorithms, and then save your 100-digit passwords in some Word file with a simple protection overcome by a simple overkill in 15 minutes.

The protection of the system is always equal to the protection of the weakest link of this system. Even if you hide your IP address with the help of the best VPN (not Chinese) in the world, you will certainly be “calculated” by the totality of your social ties on the site where you allowed Kramol.

Polite uncles will compose a list of enthusiastic readers of your post, someone will have a real IP address, and from there to the address of residence in the reallae-a stone's throw.

Your fan will be hanging at four in the morning. Then the second, third. With the fourth, you, it turns out, sat at the same desk at school.

So do not be surprised that in a couple of days you will be accepted under the white hands, along with all your ideological giblets and an annual subscription to a reliable paid VPN.

As for the love of our citizens for anonymity, only the bit of additional knowledge is not enough for sobriety: a white crow, no matter how it is encrypted in the foliage of a twilight park, is always noticeable against the background of a flock of its black brothers.

In other words, if the vast majority of the townsfolk around you do not use encryption, and you are one so advanced, you will be calculated even before you have time to write the word “Down with ...”.

At one time, the fashionable system for encryption of electronic letters Pretty Good Privacy Belip Zimmerman was burning. All emails encoded PGP contained the key in open text form, which began with the line "-Begin pgp signature-".

On this basis, encrypted letters are rapidly extracted from the flow of mail, and if desired, the third interested party can study the entire subsequent network (and not only network) activity of the grief-sophisticators in detail and without fuss.

From the foregoing, it follows that a prerequisite of information that is truly hidden from prying eyes should be Steganography .

The effectiveness of protection is determined not so much by the reliability of encryption algorithms as the absence of traces of protection itself as such. Say, the message encrypted PGP should not be sent by simple text, but integrated into some image.

From the side of the JPEG file looks like an ordinary picture, and it would not occur to anyone that the recipient of your letter using a special program will first extract an encrypted message from imaginary graphics, and then decipher it. And this is just the top of the iceberg called Steganography.

I believe that the reader is now clearly aware of the abyss separating the user of VKontakte with his touching reposts from a professional conspirator performing an operational task.

If the Salisbury spyes manage to pierce so rudely, what to demand from the priests performing for the recording “Murka”?

What practical conclusions can be drawn from all that has been said?

• Firstly, for the tasks of most ordinary users of the VPN Runet, an excess solution. So it does not matter which VPN are used - Chinese free or Nemtaine paid.

• Secondly, you need to understand that the struggle tools involved by repressive regimes like Chinese and still a couple of three familiar political assets protect power only from fools. Because only fools will reproduce provocative pictures and memes (almost without exception by trolls-provocateurs and created), knowing that according to existing laws (no matter how we relate to these laws), their actions are criminally punishable.

• Thirdly, there is no doubt that not a single professional “seditious” uses to send instant messages to the Telegram messenger, does not start stupid accounts on VKontakte, does not post a selfie against the background of secret howitzers on Instagram, does not leave digital traces in the browser cache, does not accept cuckoo files, does not accept cuckoo files, Yes, and simply never goes on the Internet through the standard operating system of its laptop.

As the Americans say: “Can You Spell Tails to Me” (“Say me the word Tails).

Well, if you know what Tails is, you should not read this article at all!

Help from the author

Tails - Debian -based Linux distribution, created to ensure serious privacy and anonymity.