Bad Neighbors: On Understanding VPN Provider Networks
Fuente:
arXiv
Salvato in:
| Autori principali: | , |
|---|---|
| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2024
|
| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | |
| Tags: |
Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
|
| _version_ | 1866916433670176768 |
|---|---|
| author | Rytilahti, Teemu Holz, Thorsten |
| author_facet | Rytilahti, Teemu Holz, Thorsten |
| contents | Virtual Private Network (VPN) solutions are used to connect private networks securely over the Internet. Besides their benefits in corporate environments, VPNs are also marketed to privacy-minded users to preserve their privacy, and to bypass geolocation-based content blocking and censorship. This has created a market for turnkey VPN services offering a multitude of vantage points all over the world for a monthly price. While VPN providers are heavily using privacy and security benefits in their marketing, such claims are generally hard to measure and substantiate. While there exist some studies on the VPN ecosystem, all prior works omit a critical part in their analyses: (i) How well do the providers configure and secure their own network infrastructure? and (ii) How well are they protecting their customers from other customers? To answer these questions, we have developed an automated measurement system with which we conduct a large-scale analysis of VPN providers and their thousands of VPN endpoints. Considering the fact that VPNs work internally using non-Internet-routable IP addresses, they might enable access to otherwise inaccessible networks. If not properly secured, this can inadvertently expose internal networks of these providers, or worse, even other clients connected to their services. Our results indicate a widespread lack of traffic filtering towards internally routable networks on the majority of tested VPN service providers, even in cases where no other VPN customers were directly exposed. We have disclosed our findings to the affected providers and other stakeholders, and offered guidance to improve the situation. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_08737 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Bad Neighbors: On Understanding VPN Provider Networks Rytilahti, Teemu Holz, Thorsten Cryptography and Security Networking and Internet Architecture C.2.5 Virtual Private Network (VPN) solutions are used to connect private networks securely over the Internet. Besides their benefits in corporate environments, VPNs are also marketed to privacy-minded users to preserve their privacy, and to bypass geolocation-based content blocking and censorship. This has created a market for turnkey VPN services offering a multitude of vantage points all over the world for a monthly price. While VPN providers are heavily using privacy and security benefits in their marketing, such claims are generally hard to measure and substantiate. While there exist some studies on the VPN ecosystem, all prior works omit a critical part in their analyses: (i) How well do the providers configure and secure their own network infrastructure? and (ii) How well are they protecting their customers from other customers? To answer these questions, we have developed an automated measurement system with which we conduct a large-scale analysis of VPN providers and their thousands of VPN endpoints. Considering the fact that VPNs work internally using non-Internet-routable IP addresses, they might enable access to otherwise inaccessible networks. If not properly secured, this can inadvertently expose internal networks of these providers, or worse, even other clients connected to their services. Our results indicate a widespread lack of traffic filtering towards internally routable networks on the majority of tested VPN service providers, even in cases where no other VPN customers were directly exposed. We have disclosed our findings to the affected providers and other stakeholders, and offered guidance to improve the situation. |
| title | Bad Neighbors: On Understanding VPN Provider Networks |
| topic | Cryptography and Security Networking and Internet Architecture C.2.5 |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08737 |