Saturday, April 28, 2012

Is a VPN Useless for BitTorrent?

A recent expose (scare tactic) featuring on TorrentFreak suggests that a "Huge Security Flaw...." makes the  use of a VPN based on a PPTP system such as The Pirate Bay's iPredator and Relakks are useless when it comes to protecting your torrenting  identity.

The vulnerability seems to revolve around the ability of the new ipv6 stack having the capability to embed your IP (IPv4) address even though you are torrenting through an IPv4 connection to the Internet and have no IPv6 connection active.

This is a rebuttal from the iPredator website:
Please notice the wording: "...... (if you are behind a router with NAT only the internal number will be compromised"). This is pretty much the case with everyone! So not only does this only apply to Windows 7 and newer Microsoft operating systems (you will be safe if you are torrenting using WindowsXP), the fact that IP addresses of the form: 102.168.1.100 are exposed - big deal! 

However, this is not likely to be the case when true IPv6 connectivity is implemented



Links related to VPN's and Torrenting:

2 comments:

Dyer, Indiana said...

I had heard that all VPNs are useless

Unknown said...

I am using "Hotspot Shield" free VPN. It generates a secure network connection over school network, moreover it is very reliable VPN and available at free of cost.