Is this stronger than AES-256?
 

These people offer a free VPN that claims "2048-bit military strength".

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...ient=firefox-a

But last time I looked AES-256 was the strongest available to us non-military users. So what is it they're offering, illegal encryption? Or is it just misleading marketing and it's weaker than AES-256?

If it's a 2048-bit symmetric key, then yes, the key length is 8 times greater, resulting in an enormous boost to the key space (2^256 vs. 2^2048). I have a feeling they're referring to an asymmetric key, however – of course, I'm not sure. If that were indeed the case, though, keep in mind that a 2048-bit asymmetric key is about as strong as a 112-bit symmetric key according to NIST. Have you considered contacting proXPN to ask them for clarification with regards to what exactly they're offering? I glanced at their site but couldn't find any details.

As a side note, Bruce Schneier wrote a pretty neat article explaining why ridiculously long keys don't actually increase security the way most people imagine. You might also want to check out his article about cryptographic snake oil (especially warning sign #5).

I couldn't see the word 'military' anywhere on the page quoted; what they say is 'by creating a 2,048-bit encrypted connection...'. Perhaps as well, given Mr Schneier's comments in the links above (brilliant links, btw, people should be forced to read them).

There doesn't seem to be much of anything in their help centre; perhaps understandable if this is a very new start-up, otherwise a worrying sign.

Good post win32sux. And great links alright.

So if we can't trust this vpn provider for offering what they say, then we can't trust them for keeping our communications private, or anonymoys. However, I have an idea:

What if you connect to the vpn, share the connection to another computer B in your lan (internet connection sharing), and then on computer B you set up a connection to another vpn from another provider, that you then share this connection (using internet connection sharing) to another computer C, and repeat? In other words:

a vpn inside a vpn inside a vpn ...

which is NOT vpn chaining.

Then an adversary would have to force ALL vpn providers involved to reveal decrypted data in order to break your privacy. And if just one vpn is in a hostile jurisdiction, the adversary gets stuck there.

They've deleted 'military' from everywhere in their site now that their beta stage is over, here's an original page before they deleted 'military':

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...://proxpn.com/

"Secures your internet with 2048-bit military-grade VPN encryption, for free"

Wow! Might as well just use Tor then. :)

Tor is too slow. :p