Comment by netsharc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by netsharc | Hacker News Reader

> Unfortunately, because VPNs will have many requests being sent from one server, website hosts can recognize when a VPN is being used. A constant stream of requests coming from one computer’s IP address is, of course, unusual behavior.

> NordVPN claims to have found a way to make traffic from its service look normal, though admits that it may not always work perfectly. It also says the NordWhisper protocol may introduce more latency.

That reads like they're wheel-reinventing Tor, and one fears they'd use other users' computers as exit nodes. But then again this "journalist" might be a too typical one, one who doesn't know what they're talking about.

And on the other side of the block, a VPN user in a suppressive regime trying to connect to a regime-known VPN server will just get a spoofed "connection refused" from the regime's firewall. interestingly a P2P-system where they connect to a random home computer somewhere on the planet instead of known commercial VPN servers, plus a hard-to-detect protocol (pretend to be a game? Do games do P2P nowadays or do they always talk to a server?), might be able to get away with it.

Anyway, the page doesn't give much detail either: https://nordvpn.com/blog/nordwhisper-protocol/

I get the occasional request to NordVPN image assets beginning with `/nordvpn/media/` on my server. Apparently this is or was a way to find out if an IP address is acting as an exit node.

> That reads like they're wheel-reinventing Tor, and one fears they'd use other users' computers as exit nodes.

Why the fear? That would probably improve overall access to privacy/anonymity, and I would assume NordVPN would take any legal heat over this, not their users.

Other services used users' computers as exit nodes without clear disclosure. Users found out when services blocked their IP addresses. And why would you assume NordVPN would take any legal heat?

I mean, if this is the case, and their users aren't aware. If the users are aware, and want to run nordvpn equivalents of tor exit nodes, then I don't see a problem.

NordVPN can't indemnify you against the cops executing a search warrant at your house, and perp walking you out in front of your neighbours because a NordVPN user used your exit node to download child abuse material.

> and one fears they'd use other users' computers as exit nodes

This is already standard practice for commercial VPN providers, and is one of ten thousand reasons you should never use one for any reason ever.

Aah, yet more bullshit on the Internet. Source?

I know those freebie VPNs do that, but many commercial providers are still sane.

>>> and one fears they'd use other users' computers as exit nodes

>> This is already standard practice for commercial VPN providers

> I know those freebie VPNs do that, but many commercial providers are still sane.

True. There are free VPN apps that rope their users into a residential proxy net. The combined userbase is sold to bad actors as a residential proxy service.

This is not what major VPN providers like Mullvad, OVPN or even Nord do.

The first two have a good reputation. Nord, not so much. However, for all it's faults, Nord is no bad actor - they're not in the same category as a ResProxy seller.

I'm a user of Mullvad, I can get configurations for Wireguard and OpenVpn through my dashboard. This eliminates the possibility of being used as an exit node as I can read the wg config and see exactly what it does. I think other providers should do the same with their systems. It allows for high flexibility.

Have any others? I haven't seen such pushback on using a VPN before, so I'm curious.

Is a person running an exit node responsible for the requests coming out of that node? Or will it just make for a very awkward conversations with the authorities if someone requests CP or terrorist paraphernalia via your exit node?

I’m not aware of specific case law, but there has been an ongoing case regarding a Tor Exit Node and copyright infringement that suggest the exit node hoster is not legally responsible for the data, at least in terms of copyright infringement. Who know about other actions

https://torrentfreak.com/tor-exit-node-operator-dodges-bulle...

Well, if you just run OpenVPN, I suppose that you're using the conventional algorithm.

This is nonsense. VPNs would be long out of business if this was true.

Plenty of popular games still do p2p

Really? Can you give some examples? Just for multiplayer or for large asset transfer?

Off the top of my mind as a big game GTA V runs P2P, I think most games that aren't competitive do, only using servers for matchmaking

I was going to respond that most games from the PS3/360 era used p2p but I don't know about recent ones. But GTA5 was a PS3/360 game.

Off the top of my head Warframe is massive and uses p2p while in most missions, Helldivers 2 was a huge launch last year with p2p, dead by daylight, a lot of indie multi-players like risk of rain 2. It's quite popular for coop style games where you need to worry less about cheating. They will use servers to create the matchmaking and then will pick the user with the strongest computer and network typically to actually host the game. I don't know of any games that do p2p asset transfer anymore

Steam has a feature for this where for supported games like Counter Strike 2 or Team Fortress 2, your connection will be routed through other players, or just people on your friends list depending on your settings.

I think it more likely they’re just repackaging XTLS/VMess with domain fronting, or one of those other heavily obfuscated techniques.

But yeah who knows, zero detail.

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