Amnezia has a new VPN protocol to stay ahead of censorship

Fool censorship and stay online. This is the goal of a VPN company amnesiawhich on Tuesday released a new protocol designed to help its customers stay one step ahead of governments around the world that try to restrict or block Internet access.

AmnesiaWG 2.0 It is an update to AmneziaWG version 1.5. The company said it was a “fundamental shift” in how the new protocol works. It’s a new development in preventing some government regulators from knowing when someone is using a VPN to access blocked apps and websites.

A VPN protocol is the set of rules that your device follows when it connects to an Internet server. AmneziaWG is built on top of the existing WireGuard protocol, a popular protocol used by many other VPNs, but with a few extra layers of obfuscation.

Mazai Banzaev, founder of Amnezia, told CNET that “the Internet is being cannibalized” in many countries and that a VPN is one of the few tools some people have to access the web.

“Censored countries are investing heavily in technologies to prevent users from visiting the open Internet,” Banzaev said. “Today, they no longer just block specific sites in Iran, they attempt to restrict much of the Internet by default, leaving access only to those explicitly permitted.”

Amnezia, a Cyprus-based open source VPN company, was founded in 2020 and has 2.5 million monthly active users of its free service.

Internet censorship is widespread in many parts of the world. According to the VPN provider Surfshark Internet shutdown tracker17 Asian countries and nine African countries currently restrict social media and messaging apps. Russia and Belarus are the two European countries with the greatest amount of internet censorship. No countries in North America, South America and Oceania have similar restrictions.

Using a VPN is not an option for most Iranians, who have been subject to a near-total government blackout since the start of the war with the US and Israel earlier in March. Russia, mired in a four-year war with Ukraine, is cracking down on Internet access.

Amnezia products include a premium version at $28 for six months or $48 for a year, as well as a free version, a self-hosted VPN, and a business version. The company has large customer bases in Russia, Iran and Myanmar, with a growing interest in Africa.

In March, WhatsApp recommended Amnezia and Mullvad As VPNs to use for people who need access to the Meta-owned messaging app, especially when it is restricted.

What is VPN?

VPN is short for virtual private network, which basically sums it up. It is a way to connect to the Internet Encrypts your web traffic – scrambling data so no one can read it – and masking your IP address to hide your actual location. that IP address It is a unique digital tag that is assigned to every device connected to the Internet. No two are the same.

VPNs can help people stream things like sporting events in other parts of the world that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to access due to geo-restrictions and regional power outages. For example, a VPN can help someone in a US location access Sky Sports in the UK to watch Premier League football matches. More importantly, using a VPN can help people access the Internet in parts of the world where governments impose strict restrictions.

When you log into a VPN from your computer, the VPN creates a secure connection between your computer and the Internet by running your traffic through an encrypted tunnel to a server in a remote location. Your ISP will not know which websites you visit or which applications you use.

CNET has A huge collection of great VPN contentand if you’re ready to rock ‘n’ roll, we’ve got recommendations for The best ones are free And also Better ones for iPhone, My neighbor and Best overall.

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How AmneziaWG 2.0 fools censorship

Governments with advanced internet censorship technology can sometimes see who is using a VPN, especially through a process called Deep package inspection. Data typically travels over the Internet in small packets. A VPN can encrypt data packets, but deep packet inspection may be able to identify the VPN protocol itself and then prevent people from using it, thus nullifying people’s attempts to encrypt data packets. Jamming.

Amnezia says its version 2.0 can emulate legality Protocols To make VPN traffic indistinguishable from regular internet browsing. It will appear as if you’re using your regular internet connection, when in fact you’re using a VPN incognito, and Amnezia says version 2.0 will help you maintain that cloak throughout your internet session.

The company said that the signature packages are the most important innovation in version 2.0. The protocol sends up to five packets that mimic a standard network request, fooling deep packet inspection into approving the connection. Amnezia VPN then initiates the real connection.

“In the second version, we kept some solutions from our first protocol but modified them to make the connection indistinguishable from legitimate UDP-based traffic: a DNS request, a QUIC session, or a SIP call,” Banzaev said.

He said it’s all about trying to “stay ahead of the curve” to overcome government censorship.