Privacy Guides @lemmy.one Nemeski @lemm.ee 2 wk. ago

DNS traffic can leak outside the VPN tunnel on Android

mullvad.net DNS traffic can leak outside the VPN tunnel on Android

We were recently made aware of multiple potential DNS leaks on Android. They stem from bugs in Android itself, and only affect certain apps.

Privacy @lemmy.ml lemmyreader @lemmy.ml 2 wk. ago

mullvad.net /en/blog/2024/5/3/dns-traffic-can-leak-outside-the-vpn-tunnel-on-android

14 comments

This is a nice write-up from Mullvad. I've been using their services for a while and will continue to do so.
- Been using Mullvad for over 10 years, first through my dads account and recently bought my own subscription for a year. Very respectable people and a great service. I recommend this to anyone looking for a VPN.
- I just wish they weren't so pricey for a casual vpn user. I'd be down with a cheap plan that throttles way down after like 20 gigs a month or something.
  
  It's $5 a month. And you get five simultaneous logins. So you and five of your friends could get together and get the price down to $1 a month.
- Aren't you all tired of the captcha that we need to solve while using VPNs? Is there a solution (I don't think so)?
  
  I use MV and rarely see a captcha.
  
  That's why I stopped using Google a few years ago. I moved to ddg and liked it pretty well. I switched to kagi earlier this year and it's going pretty well. I still run into some captchas that refuse to let me pass. I usually just turn around at that point
The leaks seem to be limited to direct calls to the C function getaddrinfo.

The Chrome browser is an example of an app that can use getaddrinfo directly.

So a Google browser...

The above applies regardless of whether Always-on VPN and Block connections without VPN is enabled or not, which is not expected OS behavior and should therefore be fixed upstream in the OS.

We’ve been able to confirm that these leaks occur in multiple versions of Android, including the latest version (Android 14).

And a Google OS...

We have reported the issues and suggested improvements to Google and hope that they will address this quickly.

It's a feature, not a bug.
This is not terribly new, and requires more investigation. One of the bugs appears to be due to Mullvad, other is potentially an Android bug.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40252719

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