 | |
| Repository | https://github.com/amnezia-vpn/ |
|---|---|
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | |
| Available in | English, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Arabic, Burmese |
| License | GNU GPL 3.0 |
| Website | Official website |
Amnezia VPN is a free and open-source application that allows users to create a personal VPN using their own server. It uses the OpenVPN, WireGuard, Shadowsocks, IKEv2 and Cloak protocols.
The setup takes place using a graphical user interface. [1]
Amnezia VPN is a project by Internet activists from Russia, who are searching for solutions to resist state censorship. The first version was designed during the Demhack hackathon in 2020, [2] held by digital human rights activists from Roskomsvoboda. [3] [4]
Amnezia VPN supports modern blocking bypass protocols and works even where other VPNs don't work - in China, Iran, and Turkmenistan. For countries with low internet censorship, Amnezia supports WireGuard and OpenVPN. In 2022, Amnezia VPN successfully passed the security audit conducted by 7ASecurity. Amnezia published free access to not only the source codes of the client part, but also the source codes of the server part. [5]
Amnezia introduced its own AmneziaWG protocol, a latest addition, which is an improved version of a popular WireGuard protocol and was designed to be used in the world's harshest internet climates. [6] AmneziaWG is a hardened version of WireGuard that removes several key aspects used to identify WireGuard using traditional DPI methods. It changes the header values from the static ones I outlined earlier to random values, which makes it harder for DPI to identify the WireGuard packet. [7]
Amnezia VPN does not require users to register, allowing all features to be accessed anonymously. It does not keep any logs of user activity and does not track users or use their personal data for any purposes. [6]
AmneziaFree is a Telegram bot for free access to blocked media and social networks websites. The developers launched AmneziaFree in March 2022, when Russian authorities started blocking media and global social platforms based on military censorship. [9] [10] One year after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, AmneziaFree had almost 100,000 active users. [3]
In April 2023, Wired magazine featured Amnezia VPN as an open-source VPN out-maneuvering Russian Censorship. It described that Amnezia VPN being a service that allows users to set up their own servers, it is making it harder for Moscow to block this portal to the outside world. [11]
Mike Williams of TechRadar stated that Amnezia's website has simple and clear setup instructions, starting with some suggestions on where to buy your own server. [12]
The Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution.
In computing, Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is used in virtual private networks (VPNs).
Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted or need to be isolated.
In cryptography, Camellia is a symmetric key block cipher with a block size of 128 bits and key sizes of 128, 192 and 256 bits. It was jointly developed by Mitsubishi Electric and NTT of Japan. The cipher has been approved for use by the ISO/IEC, the European Union's NESSIE project and the Japanese CRYPTREC project. The cipher has security levels and processing abilities comparable to the Advanced Encryption Standard.
CRYPTREC is the Cryptography Research and Evaluation Committees set up by the Japanese Government to evaluate and recommend cryptographic techniques for government and industrial use. It is comparable in many respects to the European Union's NESSIE project and to the Advanced Encryption Standard process run by National Institute of Standards and Technology in the U.S.
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Poly1305 is a universal hash family designed by Daniel J. Bernstein in 2002 for use in cryptography.
Authenticated Encryption (AE) is an encryption scheme which simultaneously assures the data confidentiality and authenticity. Examples of encryption modes that provide AE are GCM, CCM.
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wolfSSL is a small, portable, embedded SSL/TLS library targeted for use by embedded systems developers. It is an open source implementation of TLS written in the C programming language. It includes SSL/TLS client libraries and an SSL/TLS server implementation as well as support for multiple APIs, including those defined by SSL and TLS. wolfSSL also includes an OpenSSL compatibility interface with the most commonly used OpenSSL functions.
MatrixSSL is an open-source TLS/SSL implementation designed for custom applications in embedded hardware environments.
WireGuard is a communication protocol and free and open-source software that implements encrypted virtual private networks (VPNs). It aims to be lighter and better performing than IPsec and OpenVPN, two common tunneling protocols. The WireGuard protocol passes traffic over UDP.
Outline VPN is a free and open-source tool that deploys Shadowsocks servers on multiple cloud service providers. The software suite also includes client software for multiple platforms. Outline was developed by Jigsaw, a technology incubator created by Google.[3]
NordLocker is a file encryption software integrated with end-to-end encrypted cloud storage. It is available on Windows and macOS. NordLocker is developed by Nord Security, the Lithuania-based company behind the NordVPN virtual private network.
A virtual private network (VPN) service provides a proxy server to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geo-blocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks.
ChaCha20-Poly1305 is an authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) algorithm, that combines the ChaCha20 stream cipher with the Poly1305 message authentication code. It has fast software performance, and without hardware acceleration, is usually faster than AES-GCM.
Atlas VPN was a freemium VPN service provider, launched in 2019 with applications for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Android TV, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV. It was discontinued in April 2024 and merged with NordVPN