Security Loopholes in Browsers Leave VPN Users Exposed

It has recently come to light that some Internet browsers are currently vulnerable to snooping measures which enable sites to access your IP details. This vulnerability affects you even when using a VPN, even though those are meant to guarantee your anonymity! The problem also affects proxy server providers which many users are resorting to so that they can circumnavigate ISP blocks on restricted web content.

What’s the issue?

Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox have a security flaw, which means that when a website sends a request with WebRTC API (Web Real-Time Vommunication) or STUN (Session Traversal Utilities for NAT) your IP address can be discerned even if you are behind a VPN.

How do I know if I’m at risk?

Simply enable your VPN connection and use this tool here to check if you are affected by this issue.

Hopefully, you should see a result that says “Your local IP address” and then nothing and “Your public IP address” and then nothing. However, if it lists anything in this column you are vulnerable and need to take action.

Chrome fix

We’ll be starting with Chrome as it is the easiest to remedy. Simply download the extension “WebRTC-Block” from the Google Chrome store free of charge by clicking on this link.

When the extension has installed, simply log back into your VPN and try loading the test page again. Hopefully you will receive a blank test result.

FireFox fix

For FireFox users, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you actually have to do a little bit of work:

• Open a tab and type “about:config”
• Click the button that says “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
• In the search dialog, type “media.peerconnection.enabled”
• Double click on “media.peerconnection.enabled”, which should change its value to “FALSE”
• Bask in the glory of continued anonymity!

Just remember to double-check that the test page returns a blank result for your IP addresses and then you are free to continue using your VPNs with impunity.