In this paper co-authored by the Citizen Lab’s Jeffrey Knockel, researchers investigate the secret relationships between VPN operators and the vulnerabilities these VPNs share. The authors warn that the obfuscation of these relationships prohibits consumers from making informed decisions about their digital security and misleads them about the security properties of the VPNs.
Hidden Links: Analyzing Secret Families of VPN Apps was published in the Free and Open Communications on the Internet 2025 proceedings, part of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS).