Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter Wednesday to NSA Director Gen. Joshua Rudd requesting updated public guidance on VPN configurations. Americans facing advanced foreign threats, including government personnel, defense contractors, journalists, and human rights defenders, deserve clear advice on protecting their communications, Wyden wrote.
The letter gets into notably technical detail, asking about the adequacy of single-hop VPNs, which use a single server to decrypt and relay traffic, and multi-hop architectures where traffic passes through multiple servers. It also asks about techniques like random delays and cryptographic padding to defeat timing-based attacks.
Wyden specifically asks about the adequacy of Apple Private Relay, Nym, and Tor, a remarkably direct inquiry about specific security products.
The request reflects growing recognition that advice to simply use a VPN is insufficient. VPNs have well-known limitations: the encrypted tunnel often terminates at a single server, metadata like timestamps remains visible to nation-state intelligence, and commercial VPN quality varies enormously, with some logging user activity despite privacy claims.
If the NSA provides specific guidance, it could reshape how millions of Americans choose and configure their VPNs.
