New Open-Source Protocol rVPN Bypasses VPN Blocks

Internet censorship and VPN blocking are major issues for privacy-conscious users. According to a report on Hacker News, a new open-source protocol called rVPN offers an innovative solution. rVPN aims to work even in regions where VPNs are banned by carrying your traffic indistinguishably from ordinary HTTPS traffic.

The protocol's most striking feature is its use of a Double Ratchet for key renewal with every message. As stated in the article, this ensures that a stolen key cannot unlock past or future communications. Additionally, probing the server yields a real decoy site, preventing censors from finding grounds for blocking. Being written in Rust also provides a significant advantage in terms of memory safety.

Instead of a separate TLS connection for each flow, rVPN uses a smart connection pool. According to the report, this makes traffic less conspicuous by using a few long-lived connections rather than hundreds of parallel sessions, and it uses resources more efficiently. Credit-based flow control prevents bulk transfers from starving interactive traffic.

The protocol is completely free and open source under the AGPLv3 license. Development, funded by PDG Global Limited, is supported by sales of iOS and Android apps and donations. As emphasized in the article, the code will never close and remains open to audit by anyone. rVPN is currently available on all platforms.