VPN hacks

[braumeister]

For anyone here who uses these three free VPNs: SuperVPN, GeckoVPN, and ChatVPN.

According to Malwarebytes, they were hacked last week.

Detailed credentials for more than 21 million mobile VPN app users were swiped and advertised for sale online last week, offered by a cyber thief who allegedly stole user data collected by the VPN apps themselves. The data includes email addresses, randomly generated password strings, payment information, and device IDs

So what to do if you're affected? Basically, just find a better VPN to use. The free ones are not generally the most trustworthy, although there are so many today that it's hard to make a general rule like that. Caveat emptor, as always.

 

[Markola]

Good grief.

 

[easysurfer]

What? I thought one purpose of using a VPN is to not get hacked in the first place .

 

[jim584672]

You can use the Opera browser which has a VPN built in. Also the Tor browser is a VPN by design. Personally don't use a VPN because I don't see how it helps things.

 

[rt-texas]

Have used Express VPN for a number of years. Swear by VPN's, just not the free ones. I'm a believer you get what you pay for.

 

[beyou]

What? I thought one purpose of using a VPN is to not get hacked in the first place .

VPN gives you privacy generally EXCEPT you give it up to the VPN provider themselves. Have to trust them. I don't use VPN.

The other use case for VPN is to get around geographic restrictions, usually illegal access to services (like streaming) that you don't want to pay for.

If you see a car with tinted windows...they probably have something to hide.
Police and criminals take notice.

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

I wonder how secure my home VPN is. I set up the VPN feature on my ASUS router and installed OpenVPN on all my devices to connect to it. Sure, it's no use for concealing my location, but I mostly wanted it to encrypt my traffic when I'm out and decide to use free wifi somewhere to access anything personal. And now that I'm back at work, I could use the work VPN, which is probably more robust.
Oh, and if you have an unlimited cell phone plan, see if it comes with unlimited tethering/wifi hot spot. Ours does, so I could also use that instead if I wanted to.

 

[braumeister]

Have used Express VPN for a number of years. Swear by VPN's, just not the free ones. I'm a believer you get what you pay for.

There are a handful with great reputations. That's certainly one of them.

 

[target2019]

Security requires constant and consistent vigilance and testing.

From the article section, "Which VPN to Trust?"
"The important thing to note here, though, is that a VPN is merely serving as a substitute for who sees your data. When you use a VPN, it isn’t your ISP or a restrictive government viewing your activity—it’s the VPN itself."

But those in security know that someone must watch the watcher. It seems that most institutions and provate companies eventually fail on that point. The reaction to that realized threat must be timely.

 

[tulak]

I wonder how secure my home VPN is. I set up the VPN feature on my ASUS router and installed OpenVPN on all my devices to connect to it. Sure, it's no use for concealing my location, but I mostly wanted it to encrypt my traffic when I'm out and decide to use free wifi somewhere to access anything personal. And now that I'm back at work, I could use the work VPN, which is probably more robust.
Oh, and if you have an unlimited cell phone plan, see if it comes with unlimited tethering/wifi hot spot. Ours does, so I could also use that instead if I wanted to.

Secure in what way?

I think having a home VPN is the best in the case you mention: a private (home) network you use when connected to public wifi.

The only reason I’d use a public VPN service is to get around region locking.

I also wouldn’t use work VPN. Do you really want your work knowing what websites you visit?

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

Secure in what way?

I think having a home VPN is the best in the case you mention: a private (home) network you use when connected to public wifi.

The only reason I’d use a public VPN service is to get around region locking.

I also wouldn’t use work VPN. Do you really want your work knowing what websites you visit?

If I want to use a VPN, I'm probably on a coffee shop or hotel wifi, so I'm probably just reading public websites and checking email and social media. I'm comfortable doing those over my work VPN, I know everyone in the IT department pretty well, and this wouldn't be while I'm supposed to be working. In fact I'm friends on social media with a lot of people at my company, including some of the IT department. Not that that is typical, and for more sensitive stuff, well, that's why I set up the home VPN. And thanks for mentioning that it is secure enough, the setup in the routers says 1024-bit RSA encryption, I could set it to 2048 but I'm not using this for state secrets, just online banking at most.