Senator Ron Wyden asks NSA for VPN recommendations
US Senator from Oregon Ron Wyden has asked the US National Security Agency to publish detailed recommendations on using VPNs to protect communications from surveillance by foreign adversaries. Ars Technica reports.
In a letter to NSA Director General Joshua M. Rudd, the senator said clear advice is needed for Americans facing advanced foreign threats. He named government employees, defense contractors, journalists, and human rights advocates among such people. Wyden asked the agency to update its public recommendations on VPN configurations.
Questions for the NSA
A VPN routes a user's internet traffic through an encrypted connection to a remote server. This protects the content of traffic from being read between the user and the server, and can also conceal the user's IP address from the services with which they interact.
At the same time, this technology has limitations. In a standard single-hop architecture, traffic is decrypted on one server and then sent to the endpoint. Under such conditions, decrypted data or the sender's and destination's IP addresses may be accessible to dishonest employees or attackers who compromise the server. VPNs also do not encrypt certain metadata, including timestamps.
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The senator asked whether ordinary commercial single-hop VPNs are sufficient to protect a sensitive digital footprint from foreign adversaries capable of monitoring backbone internet infrastructure. He also asked whether the NSA recommends multi-hop tools instead of standard VPNs for people at elevated risk of surveillance.
Apple Private Relay, Tor and Nym
Among the services Wyden asked about are Apple Private Relay, Tor, and Nym. In multi-hop systems, traffic passes through two or more servers: the first sees the sender's IP address, while the server that terminates the connection sees the destination address.
Apple Private Relay uses two servers: one operated by Apple and another by a third-party content provider. The service's protection is limited to the Safari browser on Apple devices. Tor encrypts traffic and routes it through three servers before sending it to the endpoint. Nym is an open-source VPN client that can use a decentralized mixnet network with random delays and message reordering.
Technical protection measures
Wyden also asked the NSA to assess the importance of random delays, cryptographic padding, and cover traffic in countering analysis of transmission timing and message size. Georgetown University professor Micah Sherr told Ars Technica that there is no reliable standardization for evaluating different VPN services, making it difficult for ordinary users to determine whether they need a VPN and which service to choose. The senator asked the NSA to provide answers by October 14.
