The authorities apparently got tired of asking and just went in themselves.
Canada-based Windscribe, a VPN provider, just said that one of its European servers has been allegedly seized by Dutch authorities without a warrant. According to the company’s post on X, law enforcement said that they will return it to the service provider after they “fully analyze it.” It’s unclear why law enforcement impounded just a single rack from Windscribe’s cabinet, but the VPN provider said that it only uses RAM disk servers, meaning anyone who would look through the installed SSDs would only find a stock Ubuntu install on it, so the servers shouldn’t hold any trackable data.
Oh no, without a warrant. How could they. How impolite. No, our security is only intended for jurisdictions with law-abiding police.
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That is why you dont use VPN. See you guys in I2P.
Mullvad is safe. They were raided and the authorities got nothing.
No, this is just why you don’t use Windscribe.
They have a reputation for being in a legislation where they have to save logs. They themselves know that they’re the “black sheep” among VPN providers, which is why they continuously make cheap offers and use raunchy advertising, like this one:
Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that their VPN is likely insecure
Whatever they find is inadmissible, if there truly wasn’t a warrant.
Doesn’t mean they can’t use it for parallel construction
this isn’t in US
Laws exist outside of that country.
The same goes for NL.
What authorities exactly? How did they get their hands on these servers without being let in? Do they have a response to this all being put on twitter? Even the article doesn’t mention reaching out to “Dutch authorities” for comment, in a great journalistic failure to clarify anything.
RAM disks alone will not be enough; the law enforcement can literally freeze the DRAM for forensics.
Police have had, since the late 90s I think, the “Hotplug” which is a special battery pack / generators that provide a special power plug where you can gently loosen the existing plug, slide the generator’s plug in place over it, then remove the computer from the main supply while keeping it powered on.
Power plug locks only buy you time or prevent casual mayhem; the police can work around those.
Should build the software so the second it loses internet connection, or its IP address changes, it clears the ram.
Cannot move a server without it losing internet, and even if they find a way around it, it’d still force an IP address change.
Interesting
While it is running or seconds after…
As long as they have no logs the only thing you could get from memory is encryption keys, which can be rotated.
Got it, do not use IT services in
DenmarkNetherlands.Dutch is not Denmark. Dutch is Netherlands
An important distinction lol
“Oh you’re Danish! You should meet my friend Geert Van den Berg, he’s also from Dutchland!”
If I had a penny for every time, I’d have at least three fiddy.
Also, turns out Geert is from Germany and not the Netherlands.
Cries in European.
This is probably my favorite cold open in one of my favorite shows of all time. 😂
There’s that legal jargon that comes to mind, fishing expedition
Police have UPS-like devices which splice into existing mains cables to keep machines alive on the way into the forensics lab. Presumably it’s standard practice to use those.
Of course, the server could be configured to wipe itself if it loses connectivity for more than a few seconds, or its routing changes. The police would need devices that route Ethernet traffic over 5G, though those would presumably be detectable as bandwidth goes down and latency goes up.
