HN discussion: Why Proton VPN doesn't use RAM-only VPN servers | Hacker News
Makes sense.
Swiss isn’t the strongest, iceland is lol, everybody is marketing its just that which pitch can you live with.
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“some of the strongest”
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Was probably generated using their integrated AI models.
Not particularly compelling because… the data still exists if it’s encrypted, whereas it’s completely erased in the RAM situation. The difference between “unlikely” and “impossible” is significant in a computing/security context. Also, as Hacker News pointed out, persistent storage could potentially mean a persistent exploit if attacked.
However, I still agree this doesn’t really matter, because like they said if they’re not logging then the data they’re storing is not valuable, so it doesn’t matter either way.
Also this is not true:
- Easily release new features, as we can simply update our servers rather than needing to reboot them all with a new image.
You can update a Linux system running on RAM live no problemo.
The truth is Proton just doesn’t feel like running RAM-only servers, which I guess is their prerogative, but their blogging team seems to love making biased comparisons to other services. I tend to just ignore their non-announcement blogs lol
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Not really. RAM can leak data across reboots.
Disk is not the only “persistent storage” rootkits may attach to.
It matters in that other VPN providers are making RAM-only servers sound like a big deal when it isn’t, like Proton points out.
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IVPN doesn’t use RAM only servers either.
I really never cared if a VPN provider used RAM only or not. What’s more important is proper security and access control measures in place to mitigate any security risk.
RAM only is not some fool proof thing that will stop possible data leaks like some VPN providers like to tout.
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IIRC, Mullvad engs from their dev desktops (with disks and usb sticks and all that) can remotely access (ex: SSH) their production RAM-only boxes.
Smokes and mirrors.
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