I am currently investigating and reverse engineering free VPNs for a master thesis, and just came across something I thought I’d share. Not sure if I’ll name-drop the VPN that this code is from, but it’s not the one mentioned within the hardcoded links… Nor do I encourage visiting any of the links in the screenshot.

I’m sharing this as a warning as to never use free vpns! They are most often the opposite of what they promise to be. (by free I do not mean the free versions of premium services). But either way; be careful about your VPN choice, as they have access to a lot of sensitive data. I’m sure most peeps here know of this already, but next time you hear someone using a free vpn, let them know…

This first image/code was sitting inside a file called NetworkModule, with some hella weird external links.

  1. addrDOTcx, seems to have been linked to malware? Comes up flagged as malicious a few times on VirusTotal.
  2. freevpnDOTzone, seems to be another free possible malicious VPN service, might investigate this one later.
  3. bigbrolookDOTcom, seems to longer be a registered domain. But wtf? Was this VPN service linked to p*rn??
IMAGE HERE; Don't visit these links unless you know what you're doing.

Furthermore, there is this interesting find; Now I am no expert coder, frankly quite the amateur. But does the below code really mean what I think it does? Seems like it could be creating a fake connection? Is used once here;

Stay safe 🌻

  • TerribleTortoise@lemmy.world
    0·
    7 months ago

    The addAddress call may just be configuring the local side of the VPN. It’s hard to know without looking at the rest of the code.
    The general workflow when establishing a VPN connection is:

    • open a socket to the destination VPN service (ProtonVPN, or whatever suspect service).
    • configure parameters such as DNS, split tunneling, and which networks to route over the VPN (generally everything from your local system, except the VPN connection itself).
    • update the local routing so traffic starts flowing over the VPN.

    addAddress may just be part of the configuration. A very cursory search suggests that OpenVPN may be being used as the underlying VPN implementation framework (not uncommon).