First I’m hearing of ObscuraVPN at least, but it does seem to be a very new player in the market. However from reading through their website and Github. This service does look very promising! Though it is slightly more expensive than Mullvad.
Anyone had the chance to test their service yet? Does it seem interesting to you? Let’s discuss.
MacOS only at the moment.
I’m glad we have choices but be careful everyone, they’re new and we don’t know if they’re trust worthy.
It does seem interesting,
but I remain skeptical.
This means putting your trust in Obscura, since they’re the 1st hop, receiving your data without additional encryption, a new player, who yet has to prove that they’re trustworthy.
Sure their Github may show great software, but that doesn’t mean we can see which software they might additionally install on their servers.
Meanwhile Mullvad has already been proven to be trustworthy through the best possible review any VPN company can receive, being: Server seized by the feds, but zero useful info retrieved by them.
Which proves they back up their claim of being a No-Log VPN.
Due to this I trust Mullvad,
and don’t have any issues with sending them my data.
But I can’t put the same faith in Obscura yet, not before they receive a similar “review”.
Server seized by the feds, but zero useful info retrieved by them.
The gold standard.
As I understand it, the “first hop” in Obscura’s case would give them access to your IP address, but the identity of the destination server would be obscured until it was accepted by the second hop, Mullvad’s server. In contrast, Mullvad’s server would not see your IP address. (And, hoping you are visiting an HTTPS secured website, they would see the domain you are visiting but not the page contents.)
A helpful diagram is halfway down this page. I feel comfortable providing it, as this company is no longer in business AFAIK.
This means putting your trust in Obscura, since they’re the 1st hop, receiving your data without additional encryption, a new player, who yet has to prove that they’re trustworthy.
I’ve not checked but the whole claim is to use additional encryption, between you and the 2nd hop.
With our 2-party setup, Obscura operates the 1st hop, and we’re proud to partner with Mullvad who operates the 2nd (exit) hop. As the WireGuard packets are end-to-end encrypted to Mullvad’s servers, we never see any parts of your packet in plaintext (not even SNI). In fact, you can check your connected server’s public key in the Obscura App against those listed on Mullvad’s server page!
Can someone explain this to me? It seems like I’m sending stuff to obscura, so they can then send it to mullvad, which can then send it to the website? Like a two layer TOR?
The USP here seems to be the traffic mangling used to disguise the connection. The client is open source, which is always good, but that means it’s probably easier for a bad actor to analyse and break that USP.
Very limited payment options and macOS only currently. Feels like they’ve made a pretty webpage & rushed launch, instead of polishing the product/product availability first.
Unfortunate that the term ‘Obscura’ is dominated by the band in search results.
I will stick with stuffing an envelope with cash and posting it to mullvad, but this is definitely one to watch.
