Findings while using Freedom for the first day (Speed and Network Security)

Geraner

Hi,

 

I have been using the F-Secure Freedom VPN service now for on day on my local computer and want to write some of my findings. I have been using other VPN services since a couple of years and was pleased to see F-Secure starting with a VPN service, based in Finland EU.

 

Internet Connection Speed with Freedom

I'm living in Sweden and have a rather fast internet connection, 250 Mbit/s downlink and 100 Mbit uplink.

I have tried using Freedom to connect to several available servers. Some of the speed examples I'm receving when testing with Speedtest.net below:

- VPN Server Germany = Downlink 6 Mbit/s / Uplink 30 Mbit/s

- VPN Server Netherlands = Downlink 5 Mbit/s Uplink 20 Mbit/s

- VPN Server Finland = Downlink 30 Mbit/s Uplink 50 Mbit/s

 

For a comparison, the other VPN service from another company I'm using, I can connect UK, NL, USA and CA. I have receive the following speed, when for example using the their VPN server in Netherlands: Downlink 195 Mbit/s, Uplink 93 Mbit/s.

 

As you see, the speed of my internet connection is going down rather much, compared to using other compatitors VPN service or compared to using no VPN connection at all. 

 

Portscan - Ping - Security

I'm regular checking the functionality of the firewall and with the help of "Shields Up" from grc.com.

When using F-Secure Freedom, I'm recieving the following result (connected to server in Finland).

 

GRC Port Authority Report created on UTC: 2015-03-29 at 06:12:02

Results from scan of ports: 0-1055

    1 Ports Open
   70 Ports Closed
  985 Ports Stealth
---------------------
 1056 Ports Tested

The port found to be OPEN was: 443

Ports found to be CLOSED were: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 31, 61, 62, 91, 
								92, 121, 122, 152, 153, 182, 183, 212, 213, 242, 243, 272, 273, 303, 304, 333, 334, 363, 364, 393, 394, 423, 424, 453, 454, 484, 485, 514, 515, 544, 545, 576, 607, 637, 638, 667, 668, 697, 698, 727, 728, 757, 758, 788, 789, 818, 819, 848, 849, 878, 879, 908, 909, 939, 940, 969, 970, 999, 1000, 1029, 1030

Other than what is listed above, all ports are STEALTH.

TruStealth: FAILED - NOT all tested ports were STEALTH,
                   - NO unsolicited packets were received,
                   - A PING REPLY (ICMP Echo) WAS RECEIVED.

 

When using my regular VPN service from another competitor, or when using no VPN connection at all, I'm receiving the following result instead:

GRC Port Authority Report created on UTC: 2015-03-29 at 06:15:35

Results from scan of ports: 0-1055

    0 Ports Open
    0 Ports Closed
 1056 Ports Stealth
---------------------
 1056 Ports Tested

ALL PORTS tested were found to be: STEALTH.

TruStealth: PASSED - ALL tested ports were STEALTH,
                   - NO unsolicited packets were received,
                   - NO Ping reply (ICMP Echo) was received.

Questions:

Why is port 443 open to my local computer, when using F-Secure Freedom, and why are so many other ports just closed, and not stealth?

As you see in the results, it is also possible to ping my computer, when surfing with F-Secure Freedom. Ping is usually switched off by default on home-routers and as you see also when I'm using other VPN services.

 

With thoses findings, I'm rather disaponted with F-Secure Freedom.

 

I would be glad to receive some comments from the product managers, or people technical responsible for F-Secure Freedom. For questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

 

Regards

[Deleted User]

Hello Geraner,

 

Thank you for your feedback.

 

Regarding your concerns about the connection speed, we are not sure of what our competitors are able to achieve, but we are constantly monitoring our connections. There may be currently some slowness on certain European exit nodes and we are working on that to improve it. 

 

From what we can see, the portscan seems to be done on the gateway and not on your own device. There are reason behind the open and closed ports (port 443 is the default https port).

 

 

Sobak

Geraner,

there is absolutely no reason to be diasappointed... this is normal behavior, let's try to shed some light on this for you.

fsecure, as they pointed out in anothet thread, do not allow incoming connections to the connected devices. having port 443 open might be for managenent purposes and access can be pretty much limited to even specific ips to connect only, for example. you don't know which service is running on that port as well. grc of course never is able to scan your local device, except if you connect your machine directly to a modem or your device is placed in the dmz which can be configured in the router.. GRC scans the wan ip of the gateway which you and thousands of other users use to connect from the vpn server to the internet, many thousand users share the same external ip. when you connect to freedome your device has a local ip on the VPN server in the 198.18.0.0 range assigned, best practices.

regarding the speed, in my humble opinion, one cannot expect to achieve speeds in the 200mbit area. the price is fair, I receive decent speeds, even tough also not close to my connections limit but also that's not what such services are meant for.

Tehfcae

Port 443 is the port used by HTTP. You can secure that by using HTTPS (TLS/SSL) connections. I personally recommend using HTTPS everywhere to secure that port. As HTTP (port 443) is on the application layer most VPNs are not able to secure that port unless the application provides a second service that works with your web browser. 

 

The ports are closed but not stealthed because it is an OPENVPN tunnel. Most VPNs do not stealth themselves at that cause conectivity issues with secure networks such as coprate, or governament, or school networks. 

 

If you are looking for something more private I would recommend looking into roaming VPNs, Tor proxies, and privacy extentions such as https everywhere, privacy badger, disconnect, and ghostery.