Xerobank vs. ShadowVPN

I know this question has been asked before... but I want a "finer tip" on my answer, please.

I just signed up for Xerobank Personal. I understand this is a multiple-hop VPN solution, unlike ShadowVPN's only being one-hop. My question is... what practical difference does one-hop vs. multiple-hop really make?

Aside from the email, bandwidth allotment increase, and the other "tricks" used by Xerobank, is the avg. person better off with Xerobank vs. ShadownVPN?

Thank you for any insights, Steve at al.

 

Before steve comes in reccomending Xerobank over everything else, It depends on the service, I use a 1-Hop service and its great for me.

 

i second that

 

One hop is next to worthless for real anonymity.

 

so are you saying that shadowvpn is worthless

 

Ouch, a logic trap...

My thought is... three hops makes it harder to find someone, but is it that much harder than finding someone with only one hop? Perhaps so.

 

number of hops >1 makes no difference if there isn't multiplexing and other tech between the nodes. Tracing a 1000-hop network is trivial if you are a global adversary. Tor could be a 2-hop system, if only the nodes were trustworthy (not trying to hide the identity of the user from itself, necessitating a middle-man node), and still offer the same anonymity (no multiplexing).

main differences of note, in my opinion:

1. XB network defeats US / UK/ EU data retention and surveillance programs, Shadow offers privacy with a little anonymity since it crowds on XeroBank exits. It does this through hardcore tech. Both provide evil twin / mitm / privacy / ip change.

2. XB offers encrypted anonymous mail, great support, other fun software goodies and services. ShadowVPN doesn't.

3. XB offers premium anonymity traffic for 75GB/month, and unlimited relay (1-hop) traffic, pick your country of presence. Shadow offers 10GB/month of relay, no premium, netherlands only.

bottom line: ShadowVPN has higher privacy than all other 1-hop services. XeroBank has true anonymity, only the other three services i mentioned in the other thread have that. (the ones geazer mentioned are not anonymous).

 

How much mixing can a low latency network really provide.

I would go with Xerobank over shadowVPN any day if I was after anonymity....which I am =).

 

SSH -> France -> VPN -> Russia / Secure Single hop VPN. Also my service is 300% Cheeper then Xerobank, Xerobank is Just way overpriced for a normal user and the 3% extra anonimity is useless because if someone really wanted to find you the 3% wouldent matter anyway. I wont pay £100 extra or more a year for 3%. Also Xerobank has a 75GB Network CAP, If i am paying that load of money for a service i dont want to be capped.

The one i use can stack VPN with SSH so its basically the same as Multi-hop, And the one i use also costs only £6 a month and has over 15 different nodes with no traffic CAP or connection speed CAP.

 

Thank you, Steve T.

If only I had gone to Xerobank's forums, I could have found the answer you gave another there:

See: http://xerobank.com/forum/index.php/topic,407.0.html

>>

ShadowVPN will defeat general spying by hackers, wifi impersonators, and your ISP. XeroBank will defeat general spying by hackers, wifi impersonators, ISP, State, Federal, EU Data Directive, Foreign governments, Crime organizations, and resists traffic analysis by Echelon, many intelligence agencies, and international information gathering groups.

>>

So my next question... what agencies can intercept and comprehend Xerobank data; and, why would anyone opt for the lesser ShadowVPN?

Also, what does the soon-to-be-released cryptorouter bring to the equation?

 

TINSTAAFL. With the bandwidth accounting, you aren't limited to a single computer connection. You can have 20 computers using your single XB account. Other services will limit you to 1 connection per computer at a time. You're paying for premium access and very high flexibility + anonymity, not cheapo vps node hops on ssh. Btw, XB just picked up a 10Gbps uplink in USA. Should be implemented shortly. Strangely you've arrived at a 3%+ anonymity difference? How are you measuring that? I imagine you really mean x versus zero

As I said, the number of hops or tunnels inside tunnels make no difference whatsoever to your anonymity. Thats a common fallacy, a myth. I should add it to the list.

You don't need the france thing at all, it isn't making you more secure, unless of course that VPN isn't using encryption. You could drop that and save yourself even more money since your concern is only privacy.

a) intercept: anyone monitoring the exit node uplinks. b) comprehend: probably not anyone, unless the NSA was devoting a few datacenters into trying to do live correlation (good luck, guys.) c) most people don't know the difference between privacy and anonymity. they also don't know how either of them are achieved. there are many services in the marketplace that are set to confuse and bamboozle the user by making claims of anonymity, backed up by large bit-sizes of encryption or mentions of nodes or proxy chains or tunnels in tunnels. Just look above. It's all very confusing to the user, and mostly a bunch of bs. For others, it's an issue of price, they want less goods for less cost. well anonymity isn't cheap to implement or upkeep, and be suspicious of anyone offering it cheaply. Privacy is cheap, infact it is free if you use https.

leak-proofing, zero-config, plug and play anonymity. internet in, anonymous crypto out, no software to run. you can't mess it up, and it also prevents known and unknown side-channel attacks against anonymity of many sorts.

 

3% was 1% x Node/Hop. Truly Anonymity is not really even gained with VPN, you could just have a program installed on your computer that knows what sites your going too and what your typing anyway, and if its tailor made for your computer and does not show up in task manager then 99% of windows users are screwed.

Also was using France as an example of a node, I could have always done Node -> VPN -> Node -> SSH but most people wouldn't have understand Node or the fact they are separate.

 

That is what xB Machine is for.

 

The normal user won't use xB Machine, Its will just cause problems for them.

 

'Resists' Please explain how it 'resists' ? Where did you get this info ?

 

One question for Steve:
You keep showing how strong and difficult to reconstruct is the data traffic on XB network, being multi-hop, multiplexed, and everything else.
But what about the data being processed in the servers of the first hop. How is such data protected? At some point, I guess, this data will be elaborated in unencrypted form... what if one of these machines is compromised? What do you do to protect such machines?

On the legal point of view, XB is Panama based, ok, but some (most?) of its servers are in the US, and the others in Netherlands and Canada. What would happen if Canada had a warrant against Xerobank, and asked Xerobank to provide the data being processed in their servers? Wouldn't this mean having all traffic using Canada as first node be exposed? How would XB defend against such a situation?

 

XeroBank currently receives of 16 million hacking attempts per month against our network. While you read this sentence, 10 attacks have occurred. All XeroBank machines are heavily protected in both security and encryption. The security operates with many properties such as system-of-least-permissions, filesystem/partition encryption, internal & external firewalling at the adapter, virtualized operations inside of encrypted containers, no active content, stealth services, separation of OS from operating data, internal honeypots with intrusion detection, failsecure (NOT failsafe), key exchange logon only, multi-admin/secret-sharing anonymous auditing/access, memory/PID/process protection, panic/stress reporting, very heavy defense in depth.

Xero Networks AG does not recognize warrants from jurisdictions that are not Panama. They would be dismissed as lacking jurisdiction. If a warrant is delivered to the datacenter, or the datacenter is raided, the server will not function, may digitally self-destruct depending on tampering, and will render no user data or traffic due to encrypted systems. In Germany, when our datacenter was raided (06?) by police in swat gear, machine guns, and black helicopters, the prosecution and investigators got nothing but a mouthfull of encryption and internal humiliation. They acted rudely, and reaped the fruit of it. XB cannot be taken by force.

 

My God Steve. Why would they raid Xerobank like that? Just because it is an anonymity service?

And 16,000 hacking attempts per month? WTF? Why? What am I missing here? Is that typical in this kind of business. Sheese!

 

Can't really say. Obviously they were looking for something (But didn't find it of course). And you're missing some zeros on those hacking attempt figures. I'm sure the number is up now.

 

The number of hacking attempts per month against Xerobank is probably typical, just because it's a high priority target for hackers.

I remember seeing similar numbers for NASA and other US government agencies. Most if it is probably hackers trying to "prove themselves". They're putting their skills against that of their target, and trying to prove that they're better. Most government agencies and other high profile targets probably have a similar number of hacking attempts per month.

Imagine the bragging rights a hacker would have if they hacked into Xerobank's computers. Same thing with NASA, FBI, NSA etc...

 

Wow Steve I guess I had no idea how involved having a business like this would be. I could not imagine what it must have been like for those who were there when the data center was raided. Helicopters and guns? Sheese!

 

Okay. I can understand the challenge of it. That's understandable. But I guess I had absolutely *NO* idea that there were so many hackers out there. I'm really shocked to hear all of this. Thanks for the explanation.

 

While there are definitely a lot of hackers out there, it's not as many as you'd think going by the figures provided. It's not 16 million hackers attacking once each, it'd be a significantly smaller number of hackers launching multiple attacks.

The comment from Steve indicating they would have received 10 attempts in the time taken to read a sentence can easily refer to one person launching several attacks in a very small timeframe.

There are tools out there that will automatically scan every IP in a given range for potentially exploitable services. Those same tools will then attempt to exploit these services and deliver a payload. This shotgun approach means that most of the servers will register a large number of alerts in a short period of time in their audit logs but a few servers will be compromised, which is all the would-be hacker needs.

 

I am not just speaking of "scanners". I mean real live people on the other end as well, attempting very sophisticated attacks with unpublished exploits.

 

You really believe all of Steve's hype about Xerobank? It's a tiny outfit run by one person - Steve Topletz. He has someone who helps him but the owner of XB is Steve Topletz. Period. That's why he's never answered the simple question about who owns the company. He's always been too embarrassed to admit that he's it!

Bragging rights for breaking into Xerobank's computers? Seriously? There are privacy providers out there that are several hundred times the size of Xerobank. XB is probably not even in the top 100. Try Googling - privacy vpn - and see where you find Xerobank on the list. Comparing hacking Xerobank with NASA, the FBI, NSA - that's ridiculous. If one could hack into Xerobank - nobody would care. That's how small they are!

Go on you say? Not to mention, they're expensive and overpriced, make claims for themselves that aren't true, makes up BS about Tor that doesn't make a bit of sense, misleads Wilders members about "their" data center being raided with SWAT and black helicopters, they have to make excuses when logging shows that XB and Shadow are basically one and the same. I could go on and on and on and on and on. But, they do have a nice web site! That $35 a month has to go to something and it does - good web designers. But many of those outfits with simple web pages but ten to fifteen dollars a month for OpenVPN based services? They're as good - or better - than Steve's bragware.

Xerobank, ShadowVPN, Cryptohippie, Metropipe, all the other "related" outfits sharing the same server farm in Germany are mostly scam, talk and hype.

That's my two cents, or less, as I post once for every several hundred from Steve who's either busy promoting XB's next "breakthrough" or slamming other commercial providers and even Tor!

Must keep some balance here.