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I'm not sure, their response could be fabricated too. I'm interested in if Torguard has any evidence of them physically approaching their employee. > Within an

I'm not sure, their response could be fabricated too. I'm interested in if Torguard has any evidence of them physically approaching their employee. > Within an hour of this in-person and unannounced visit, the same TorGuard contractor received unsolicited correspondence from an employee at NordVPN. This correspondence stated that NordVPN had received certain of TorGuard’s confidential and trade secret information and requested to set up an instant message chat to discuss this with TorGuard. Also, according to both parties they communicated with each other with evidence. So all either party has to do to claim their innocence is submit the emails/communications they claimed to have. --- The DDOS part I'm very weary about. What evidence does torguard have that NordVPN was the one carrying out the DDOS attacks? I'll admit I haven't thoroughly examined the entire document, but they don't really seem to state how they know NordVPN was behind the attacks, they just list the dates they were attacked. Given the nature of DDOS attacks, they could be from anyone.

ganoushoreilly 7y ago
What if I told you that a lot of these "VPN providers" were shell companies built to explicitly facilitate access and tools for crime / espionage with the premise of having users there as cover.
- walrus01 7y ago
  Not something that many HN posters will be familiar with, but if you're a holder of significant pieces of ARIN or RIPE IP space, you'll inevitably be approached by a number of suspicious looking companies that want to "rent" your ipv4 space (by the /24 block) for VPN/proxy usage. The end result if you actually fall for their bullshit is that your IP space will be listed in every RBL until the end of time, and will have a bottom 5% rank in every IP space reputation/antifraud system until the heat death of the universe. Every time I've been approached by these clowns, I've spent a cursory 3 to 5 minutes trying to find an actual business behind it (names of real humans, street address that isn't just a mailbox, location of real ISP infrastructure equipment at some real IX points) and failed to find anything resembling a legitimate ISP.
  - penagwin 7y ago
    I'm just curious, do you own/work for a company with a bunch of ip addresses? Or did you buy them for a homelab? Also, is there an "affordable" way to own an IP?
    - walrus01 7y ago
      The former. Second question, not really, and you never own an IP, you just have permission from Arin, ripe, apnic, etc to use it.
- penagwin 7y ago
  Oh trust me, I'm well aware of "VPN providers". Just checkout luminati.io . See how they offer an SDK so "You can offer the user a choice between advertisements or a bit of background data usage"? I asked, and they are only interested in partners with 100k active users a month. Right, like a legitimate company with that many users is going to use luminati. Or oxylabs.io who I think owns luminati? I'm also aware that many of the VPNs are owned by the same parent companies. And also that VPNs are ridiculously over marketed. They don't "add security" for most people, they just move who you're trusting from your ISP to the VPN company. Right, like I want to trust a company registered in Panama with no other existence outside of this year not to sell my data. --- tl;dr - I don't trust any of them. If I want a "VPN" I just ssh-tunnel into a VPS from an established company that I purchase with a different account. Could the VPS provider do fishy stuff? Sure, but I trust them a lot more then these "VPN" providers.
  - pnutjam 7y ago
    Stick with the big players, PIA, airvpn. I trust those two.
    - penagwin 7y ago
      At the end of the day they're mostly just fancy OpenVPN profiles. The entire space is fishy AF IMO. I'm thankful that linustechtips seems to evaluate their VPN sponsors at least. I believe they dropped tunnelbear in favor of PIA because of similar concerns.
      - ganoushoreilly 7y ago
        Tunnelbear was acquired and all sponsorship dropped, he actually mentioned it on one of the derbauer overclocking posts from Computex this past week. PIA has cross pollination with IP blocks owned by Micfo subsidiaries as well. They're all like 2 degrees away from each other.
  - preinheimer 7y ago
    More on how luminati and other "residential ip" providers work here: https://medium.com/@xianghangmi/resident-evil-understanding-residential-ip-proxy-as-a-dark-service-dea9010a0e29 https://medium.com/@xianghangmi/resident-evil-understanding-...
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  >What if I told you that a lot of these "VPN providers" were shell companies built to explicitly facilitate access and tools for crime / espionage with the premise of having users there as cover. Interesting. I mean, Tor was was originally developed by the Navy as an OSINT tool, and later released because an "anonymity" network only used by the Navy isn't very useful. More and more often non-state actors are doing what used to be in the purview of intelligence services, so it passes the sniff test. But without specific evidence all I'll say is "plausible, but unconfirmed" :)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
cremp 7y ago
On the DDoS... I'm more inclined to say they don't know who it was, but pointing fingers, and Black Friday to maximize the potential damages reward. The legal case also says "unknown individual"; so they could be a run-of-the-mill reporter or something. A lot of what Torguard is saying in the case is pretty benign. An email from header can be faked, trade secrets, if left on the open web... aren't really secret anymore. Nord isnt in a clean place either. Their response is making claims that the legal case doesnt even touch.
larkeith 7y ago
Regarding the DDoS part, the claim seems to be that the attacks were based on the secret information NordVPN possessed: "35. The DDoS attacks directed against TorGuard were based upon the Information— the nature and way they occurred and were timed made it patently obvious that the attacker had obtained the Information from Collective 7 and was utilizing it as a roadmap for DDoS attacks."
- penagwin 7y ago
  See that's the first part of the story to me were both stories make a bit of sense. Nord says they discovered a configuration file with IP addresses that still worked. If those were infrastructure IP's, and not otherwise public, that would certainly make more sense as to how Torguard believes Nord was responsible. I know they used the timing like Black Friday as evidence that it was a competitor carrying out the attacks, but they have lots of competitors, so I was really confused as to how they settled on Nord as the attacker.

ganoushoreilly 7y ago

What if I told you that a lot of these "VPN providers" were shell companies built to explicitly facilitate access and tools for crime / espionage with the premise of having users there as cover.

walrus01 7y ago
Not something that many HN posters will be familiar with, but if you're a holder of significant pieces of ARIN or RIPE IP space, you'll inevitably be approached by a number of suspicious looking companies that want to "rent" your ipv4 space (by the /24 block) for VPN/proxy usage. The end result if you actually fall for their bullshit is that your IP space will be listed in every RBL until the end of time, and will have a bottom 5% rank in every IP space reputation/antifraud system until the heat death of the universe. Every time I've been approached by these clowns, I've spent a cursory 3 to 5 minutes trying to find an actual business behind it (names of real humans, street address that isn't just a mailbox, location of real ISP infrastructure equipment at some real IX points) and failed to find anything resembling a legitimate ISP.
- penagwin 7y ago
  I'm just curious, do you own/work for a company with a bunch of ip addresses? Or did you buy them for a homelab? Also, is there an "affordable" way to own an IP?
  - walrus01 7y ago
    The former. Second question, not really, and you never own an IP, you just have permission from Arin, ripe, apnic, etc to use it.
penagwin 7y ago
Oh trust me, I'm well aware of "VPN providers". Just checkout luminati.io . See how they offer an SDK so "You can offer the user a choice between advertisements or a bit of background data usage"? I asked, and they are only interested in partners with 100k active users a month. Right, like a legitimate company with that many users is going to use luminati. Or oxylabs.io who I think owns luminati? I'm also aware that many of the VPNs are owned by the same parent companies. And also that VPNs are ridiculously over marketed. They don't "add security" for most people, they just move who you're trusting from your ISP to the VPN company. Right, like I want to trust a company registered in Panama with no other existence outside of this year not to sell my data. --- tl;dr - I don't trust any of them. If I want a "VPN" I just ssh-tunnel into a VPS from an established company that I purchase with a different account. Could the VPS provider do fishy stuff? Sure, but I trust them a lot more then these "VPN" providers.
- pnutjam 7y ago
  Stick with the big players, PIA, airvpn. I trust those two.
  - penagwin 7y ago
    At the end of the day they're mostly just fancy OpenVPN profiles. The entire space is fishy AF IMO. I'm thankful that linustechtips seems to evaluate their VPN sponsors at least. I believe they dropped tunnelbear in favor of PIA because of similar concerns.
    - ganoushoreilly 7y ago
      Tunnelbear was acquired and all sponsorship dropped, he actually mentioned it on one of the derbauer overclocking posts from Computex this past week. PIA has cross pollination with IP blocks owned by Micfo subsidiaries as well. They're all like 2 degrees away from each other.
- preinheimer 7y ago
  More on how luminati and other "residential ip" providers work here: https://medium.com/@xianghangmi/resident-evil-understanding-residential-ip-proxy-as-a-dark-service-dea9010a0e29 https://medium.com/@xianghangmi/resident-evil-understanding-...
dontbenebby 7y ago
>What if I told you that a lot of these "VPN providers" were shell companies built to explicitly facilitate access and tools for crime / espionage with the premise of having users there as cover. Interesting. I mean, Tor was was originally developed by the Navy as an OSINT tool, and later released because an "anonymity" network only used by the Navy isn't very useful. More and more often non-state actors are doing what used to be in the purview of intelligence services, so it passes the sniff test. But without specific evidence all I'll say is "plausible, but unconfirmed" :)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

cremp 7y ago

On the DDoS... I'm more inclined to say they don't know who it was, but pointing fingers, and Black Friday to maximize the potential damages reward. The legal case also says "unknown individual"; so they could be a run-of-the-mill reporter or something. A lot of what Torguard is saying in the case is pretty benign. An email from header can be faked, trade secrets, if left on the open web... aren't really secret anymore. Nord isnt in a clean place either. Their response is making claims that the legal case doesnt even touch.

larkeith 7y ago

Regarding the DDoS part, the claim seems to be that the attacks were based on the secret information NordVPN possessed: "35. The DDoS attacks directed against TorGuard were based upon the Information— the nature and way they occurred and were timed made it patently obvious that the attacker had obtained the Information from Collective 7 and was utilizing it as a roadmap for DDoS attacks."

penagwin 7y ago
See that's the first part of the story to me were both stories make a bit of sense. Nord says they discovered a configuration file with IP addresses that still worked. If those were infrastructure IP's, and not otherwise public, that would certainly make more sense as to how Torguard believes Nord was responsible. I know they used the timing like Black Friday as evidence that it was a competitor carrying out the attacks, but they have lots of competitors, so I was really confused as to how they settled on Nord as the attacker.