Virtual Private Network (VPN) and proxies are data encapsulation software that does IP encapsulation in either\u00a0Layer 2 or Layer 3 or maybe even both.\u00a0VPNs and proxies are often\u00a0used for bypassing firewall restrictions, anonymity, access Intranets of certain organisations and visiting websites that are blocked by your ISP.<\/p>\n
So how do they work? After the packet data from Layer 3 is ready to be sent, the packet will be encapsulated with the VPN’s IP address before proceeding to Layer 2. This will hide your computer’s real IP address but if you’re using a proxy, there might be headers (X-Forwarded-For) which are sent\u00a0to reveal your IP address. This is done for some public proxies to prevent abuse from users. If the data exchange link between the VPN\/proxy and computer\u00a0is encrypted, Firewalls will not be able to look through the data to detect and block certain content. This is especially useful if you’re using China’s networks which are filtered and blocked by the Great Firewall of China (Golden Shield Project) or if you’re within a school or campus network. Proxies are also mostly limited for web browsing usage due to limited support from program developers. For example, most\u00a0games\u00a0with multiplayer cannot be run through a proxy.<\/p>\n
There are many opensource VPN projects such as SoftEther<\/a>, OpenVPN<\/a>, Tinc<\/a>, StrongSwan<\/a>\u00a0and many more while proxy software include but are not limited to\u00a0ShadowSocks<\/a> and Glype<\/a>. These software requires a server and needs to be setup and configured by a person with some knowledge in networking. However, there are many free open proxies which do not require any setup. One of the most famous free and open proxy would be Tor<\/a>\u00a0and another one would be I2P<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tor was started out as a project by the USA Navy and funded by the US government to allow complex encrypted communications within the government officials, officers and the US Army. It became a even more popular tool after Edward Snowden’s whistle blowing in 2013. He recommended the use of Tor and PGP to protect users’ privacy. Security wise, it’s possible to reveal your IP address while connecting through Tor if, and only if you did not disable Javascript and you visit a website that uses certain Javascript code that can reveal your IP address. Therefore, many steps and actions are required to fully protect your anonymity while surfing on the Tor network. Both the American and Russian government has also invested a lot of money into decrypting the Tor network. As of now, Tor is still “unbreakable”. Besides all these political drama, Tor is notorious for being misused by a lot of users to launch large scale Distributed Denial of Service attacks, browse child pornography, buy illegal drugs online and even offer assassination services.<\/p>\n In conclusion, VPN and proxy services are very useful and helpful tools that enables people from China to reach out to the world behind the Great Firewall of China. However, it is also a very destructive tool if abused by evil<\/em> people with evil<\/em> intentions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Virtual Private Network (VPN) and proxies are data encapsulation software that does IP encapsulation in either\u00a0Layer 2 or Layer 3 or maybe even both.\u00a0VPNs and proxies are often\u00a0used for bypassing firewall restrictions, anonymity, access Intranets of certain organisations and visiting websites that are blocked by your ISP. So how do they work? After the packet … Continue reading “VPN and proxies – What are they?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[18,16,7,17,19,6],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-technology","category-it-softwares","tag-great-firewall-of-china","tag-proxy","tag-security","tag-shadowsocks","tag-tor","tag-vpn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woohuiren.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}