Re: [FD] “Steganos Online Shield VPN” leaks the user’s hostname in the HTTP “Via” header

[Adam Dodson <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I forwarded these details to the Steganos dev team and they have just
addressed this issue with a software update yesterday :)

Regards,
Adam

>
> On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 7:45 AM, Stefan Paletta <stefanp@xxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> “Steganos Online Shield VPN” claims to enhance the user’s privacy online
>> (<https://www.steganos.com/en/products/vpn/online-shield-vpn/features/>)
>> by, among other measures, (a) blocking advertisements in web pages, (b)
>> blocking tracking code in web pages,  and (c) replacing the browser’s
>> “User-Agent” header with a fixed value. The measures can be enabled
>> independent of each other and independent of other functionality of the
>> software (e.g. use of a VPN connection).
>>
>> Use of any feature (a) through (c) will enable a local HTTP proxy server
>> based on Node.js (<http://nodejs.org/>) and <
>> https://github.com/axiak/filternet>.
>>
>> When (a) and/or (b) are enabled, and (c) is not, the proxy will leak the
>> hostname of the machine in a “Via” header like so: “Via: 1.1 foobar:8123
>> (Steganos Online Shield)” (where “foobar” is the local hostname).
>>
>> The code is this <
>> https://github.com/axiak/filternet/blob/e9109999c3bf554ee1afa701cf5bd765396427ec/lib/proxy.js#L19>
>> (think %windir%\System32\HOSTNAME.EXE) and this <
>> https://github.com/axiak/filternet/blob/e9109999c3bf554ee1afa701cf5bd765396427ec/lib/proxy.js#L116
>> >.
>>
>> When (c) is enabled, custom code in the proxy will replace the
>> “User-Agent” header with a fixed value and replace the “Via” header with
>> the empty string (not remove it altogether), thereby mitigating the
>> information leak.
>>
>> The machine’s hostname is usually strongly connected to the user’s
>> identity (often containing their name). In addition to that, it is a strong
>> distinguisher that will allow a correlation of HTTP requests as originating
>> from the same machine (and thereby user, to some degree) even when these
>> requests are not otherwise related in any way.
>>
>> When reproducing, be careful that online services echoing back your HTTP
>> request may or may not echo a “Via” header when one is in fact present.
>>
>> –Stefan
>>
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>
>
>

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