Skip to main content

Psiphon Completes Another Third Party Security Review

In late June 2017, Psiphon continued to prove its commitment to open source development (you can access our code repository here), by commissioning Cure53 to perform a security audit of our services. The security review took 22 days and a total of 9 testers to complete what was described as a review with a “vast scope” and the Cure53 testers were very thorough. This is our 2nd security audit of this kind in 3 years (you can see the results of the 1st one, performed by iSec here).
The report’s description of what was included in the scope reads:
“In scope were multiple components of the Psiphon software compound, including the tunnel-core client and server, the library glue, the Psiphon iOS app and, last but not least, the Psiphon iOS browser. This very broad premise and scope explain the necessity for involving a rather large number of testers with properly matched expertise in different arenas. In sum, the tests included code audits, actual penetration tests, protocol and configuration reviews, and a cryptographic audit."
We are very happy with the results of the security audit and proud to relay that “no noteworthy security risks could be unveiled” (pg.19). In the spirit of transparency you can read the full detailed report in pdf form here. Of the two vulnerabilities found, one has already been fixed (and confirmed by Cure53) and steps have been taken to address the other in upcoming releases.
The testers also noted 7 other miscellaneous issues that you can find listed in the report, four of these have also already been addressed.
The testers shared a conviction that the software compound greatly benefitted from a number of software security audits in the past. Needless to say, this is reflected in findings. Among the total nine issues discovered, only two were marked as security vulnerabilities and were further ascribed with the lowest “Informational” severity ranking.”
The Cure53 testers noted several times throughout the report how clean and quality driven the code is and came to the following conclusion:
“Despite investing considerable time and personnel resources into attempting a compromise, the Psiphon components in scope held up to scrutiny and presented themselves strong and robust in face of adversarial efforts. The bottom line is that no noteworthy security risks could be unveiled.”

We hope that you will find this report interesting, and that it will assure you of our commitment to providing first-class software that will always be open source and secure.

Popular posts from this blog

Amid major network disruptions, 1.76M Psiphon users in Belarus

The Psiphon network supported a peak 1.76 million daily active users during significant network interference that started August 9th, a figure that represents nearly 1 in every 3 internet users. A large-scale disruption to international internet access was observed in Belarus, beginning during the contested presidential election on August 9th. Widespread filtering was reported across all Belarusian networks, affecting popular messaging apps including Telegram, Viber, and WhatsApp; social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube; major app markets including Google Play and the App Store; email providers Gmail, Mail.ru, and Yandex; maps, banking, online media, and many other services. Rolling blackouts of the mobile networks also occurred nightly between 6PM and 6AM. The majority of VPNs were reportedly blocked as a result of generalized SSL/TLS filtering. Tor direct connections were disrupted by the increased network change, while Tor bridge users reached a peak 8,0...

Why You Don't Need Google's Domain Fronting

Google’s removal of domain fronting emphasizes the need for solutions like Psiphon. Google has confirmed that they will block domain fronting across Google domains and App Engine. For many apps and publishers, this represents a step backwards in the fight for internet freedom. While Psiphon has never relied on this Google service, many app developers continued to depend on the practice as a convenient and straightforward means of circumventing state-level censorship, despite the long-running speculation that Google would close this loophole (eg. Will Scott’s blog post in 2017). While the announcement has been met with criticism from internet activists and service providers alike, Google has defended their decision, saying “ domain fronting has never been a supported feature ”. Domain fronting has been a popular means of censorship circumvention for several years, being embraced by popular apps like Signal, who publicly adopted the practice in 2016 . While using Google domain...

Cybernews Interview, Psiphon: “the world is becoming more and more privacy-conscious”

Most of us are aware of the necessity of having strong VPN protection in place. But what are the inherent issues with standard VPN applications, and how can they be solved? While choosing the best VPN often comes down to its features, the problem with many of the modern VPN applications concerns easily recognizable traffic in certain Internet environments despite the implemented end-to-end encryption. But what can be done about it? To discuss this matter, we’ve reached out to Alexis Gantous, a member of the Business Development and Operations team at Psiphon Inc, a company that works on providing uncensored Internet access for Windows and mobile devices. How did the idea of creating Psiphon originate? Psiphon was founded out of a research project at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, founder and CEO Michael Hull saw the opportunity to take the original peer-to-peer system and further develop it to fill the needs of millions around the world who face restrictions to their access t...