Thread: VPN's

Okay, so from reading your posts, the only thing we can be sure of is that we can't be sure if it's 100% secure?

I'm not sure if this helps. I never used a VPN.

If you pay for an VPN, you had to use some sort of credit card to purchase it. can't they just track that credit card to that VPN?

There was already a discussion about that in this thread. and it got resolved. Just read the posts.

There is a lot of confusion about VPNs. I will try to clear some of that up. As pulser noted, a properly implemented VPN works. It does protect traffic from individuals, corporations and even courts that would seek to see what you are doing. If logs are not kept, it is in practical terms impossible to trace where the endpoint is. And non-governmental bodies are not going to be able to break that encryption. Realize that the OP posited an unusual situation of throwing the resources of a major government at this. That changes the answer. But intelligence agencies have little interest or time to chase torrenters or much else that you would do. So unless you are a big time criminal it is highly unlikely that the NSA will be trying to unravel your VPN.

It is difficult to overstate the gap between the resources available to the intelligence community and the rest of society. When you assemble tens of thousands of phD scientists and technicians it is amazing what technologies come out of that collaboration. Magnitud3 states that the programs that I cited are largely obsolete. There is some truth to that. I cited well known examples that are well documented just to give a glimpse into the vast resources that can be brought to bear in the community. Many of those specific programs are a decade or more old. And still the capabilities are astonishing. I can tell you little about current programs. They are largely outside public purview. What little I know, is bound by confidentiality. And most is simply unknown to me or other outsiders. What we find out is much after the fact, long after such programs are largely superseded by bolder initiatives.

Echelon remains relevant because of the pervasive data mining. Even though the mandate of this program is to intercept foreign data traffic, myriad examples of domestic exceptions and abuse have been documented. Still, unless you are a terrorist or drug czar you need not lose much sleep over it.

And what of MajorNil's followup question? What would a hacker need to do? He would want a tortuous path to his target. One that was redundant and had physical/mechanical links in a chain, not just electronic routing. You'd want things like zombie relays, rewritten logs and undocumented ghost uplinks off satellite sidebands. Multiple VPNs and removable links in your communications chain. You'd want uncertainty and deception to obscure the point of origin. You expect that your path will be traced and take steps to deal with that. And fastidious attention to details as any one misstep can bring down the whole house of cards. So many things could trip him up. From credit card receipts, finger prints or surveillance video to a SIGINT intercept of a cell phone conversation talking about your exploit. A really good hack would be one that no one is even aware of.