Your ‘free’ VPN may actually be a malware bot

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ISSUE 21.24 • 2024-06-10 PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston Law-enforcement authorities, coordinating the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and simi
[See the full post at: Your ‘free’ VPN may actually be a malware bot]

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ibe98765, rc primak, fisher75, IBM1130, abbodi86, TechTango, DLivesInTexas, Mr. Austin, AWRon, lmacri, opti1, Alex5723

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https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/free-android-vpn-security-flaws-100-apps-tested/

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ibe98765, rc primak

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Anything “Free” is only worth what you paid for it, and nothing more.

I can’t believe that people are still falling for scams like this.

I understand that not everthing that is “free’ is a scam.

But it it really worth the risk to save a few bucks?

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rc primak

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Brian, great work on this Public Defender article, full of useful insights, as usual.

However:

“Perhaps artificial intelligence will soon be able to predict the scams being planned by these lowlifes and get them thrown into the pokey before they can ruin our lives on a global scale.”

Nice thought.

More likely,  before that ever happens, the lowlifes will be using AI to make their activities even harder to detect.  That’s the way it always is.

— AWRon

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rc primak

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Thank you, master Livingston. This article was your customarily thorough information.

Aside from that, how long have you been using that photo of yourself? There are many of us who appreciate your decades-long experience, who might enjoy seeing a more recent photo if you’ve accrued a few more miles on your odometer.

A few years back I finally changed my own photo. I looked up a photographer who I respected and admired, who once upon a time was invited to photograph the 14th Dalai Lama. I engaged her to do my current snaps.

And several years before that, during my first talk show’s run, I serendipitously met one of my guests in person, Mick Quinn. He was happily astounded that I looked like my picture.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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I’ve been using that photo since January 2021. The background is a wall of monitors from a booth at a computer show.

Photographers, of course, can always make me look better in a photo than I do in real life. Lucky me!

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rc primak

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B. Livingston wrote:

I’ve been using that photo since January 2021.

The same photo has been on your own website for 15 years longer than that:

https://web.archive.org/web/20051227081822/http://www.brianlivingston.com/aboutbrian/

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I’ve seen him over the years and he hasn’t aged.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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rc primak

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Really? Not in 20 years?

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Another thing that your readers could consider is the open source OpenVPN running in your router.  If it one that supports third-party software.  One popular option for ASUS routers is the Merlin.

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rc primak

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OpenVPN — A bit more do-it-yourself than most folks would like, but easier than self-hosting a personal or small business VPN tunnel.

-- rc primak

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Read a similar warning earlier this month..

Ref: https://restoreprivacy.com/six-vpn-apps-introduced-botnet-malware-on-systems-since-2014/

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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rc primak

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https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/how-to-identify-and-remove-vpn-applications-that-contain-911-s5-back-doors/

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rc primak

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I have read the FBI paper & see no comment on Apple OSes. Does that mean that iOS, iPadOS, & MacOS are not affected by this malware? Thx

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bilduval wrote:

Does that mean that iOS, iPadOS, & MacOS are not affected by this malware?

Apple’s OSs are not affected.

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rc primak

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Free can be costly in other ways, and this just proves that. Anything provided you as a service or product for free will come with strings attached. Some of those are tentacles used for nefarious means. I always assume free means providing something in return.

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rc primak

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I use PIA on my PC and my wife uses the VPN that come with Norton. However, on my iPhone I use Encrypt.me (formerly Cloak). When I started using this years ago, its UI was much better than several others I tried on the iPhone. I like the ease of changing servers, as I travel a lot. Its France server has been much more reliable (fewer timeouts) than PIA, for example.

I haven’t seen any reviews or comments, positive or negative, about Encrypt.me.  It costs $13/month. Anyone out there have any thoughts on this?

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Thanks for the article and 2 questions

1. I was looking to find a way to create a VPN between my house (with watchguard firebox) and my daughters house (with an ISP’s router) to see if I could get my TVs / Rokus / etc to go through her house when we are using a streaming service : )
2. has anyone heard of / expect your commercial VPN service’s IP address to change every few minutes???

   There was a video being shown on line but geo-locked to a different state. I was all proud of myself when I paid and was able to watch it through ExpressVPN.  But went back to watch it with my wife and found out that express VPN changes your VPN IP every few minutes.  I guess the film festival records your IP the first time you watch it and even with Express VPN connected the whole time, by the time we went to watch a 2nd time, our IP changed / they thought we were sharing the link to the movie with another person / house.

   Tracking my public Express VPN IP after that, I saw it changed every few minutes.  Seems this would be a big flag for a streaming service to look for as a sign you are using a VPN?!  ‘Yeah, your IP says you are in the correct country to watch that show, but your IP keeps changing. What’s up with that!?’

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VPN services have a range of IP addresses that they share across all their clients. There is no guarantee you will retain a particular address unless you pay for that service.

The alternative is to use a router that has VPN server (plenty have this option) with your broadband connection. Then you connect to the router and use its IP address, which rarely changes.

cheers, Paul

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windbg

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