Why Your VPN May Not Be As Secure As It Claims (Krebs on Security)
Virtual private networking (VPN) companies market their services as a way to prevent anyone from snooping on your Internet usage. But new research suggests this is a dangerous assumption when connecting to a VPN via an untrusted network, because attackers on the same network could force a target’s traffic off of the protection provided by their VPN without triggering any alerts to the user. Image: Shutterstock. When a device initially tries to connect to a network, it broadcasts a message to the entire local network stating that it is requesting an Internet address. Normally, the only system on the network that notices this request and replies is the router responsible for managing the network to which the user is trying to connect. The machine on a network responsible for fielding…