Saturday, November 9, 2024
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Security researcher: ‘VPNs on iOS are broken’

A security researcher says "VPNs on iOS are broken."

A security researcher says that iPhones don’t fully route all network traffic through VPNs as a user might expect, “a potential security issue the device maker has known about for years,” reports Ars Technica.

Michael Horowitz, a longtime computer security blogger and researcher, says in his continually updated blog post that “VPNs on iOS are broken.”

From his post: At first, they appear to work fine. The iOS device gets a new public IP address and new DNS servers. Data is sent to the VPN server. But, over time, a detailed inspection of data leaving the iOS device shows that the VPN tunnel leaks. Data leaves the iOS device outside of the VPN tunnel. This is not a classic/legacy DNS leak, it is a data leak. I confirmed this using multiple types of VPN and software from multiple VPN providers. The latest version of iOS that I tested with is 15.6. This data leak was first publicized by ProtonVPN in March 2020 and iOS v13.

VPN (virtual private network) is a technology that encrypts your internet traffic on unsecured networks to protect your online identity, hide your IP address, and shield your online data from third parties.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.