Ars tests ExoNet, the personal VPN that takes you home

There has been a lot of interest—and a lot of skepticism—generated by privacy-oriented Internet gadgets recently. Many of them have focused on using Tor to anonymize network traffic completely, using inexpensive pocket routers and open-source software. But some of these projects have failed to launch or (like Anonabox and Torfi) have been outright pulled by the crowdfunding sites they were offered on, for a number of reasons—including serious doubts about whether they actually were secure, or if they were even products.

One hardware-based approach to privacy currently in development takes a different tack. Rather than relying on Tor's anonymizing network, ExoNet and ExoKey—a pair of devices from a four-year-old Santa Barbara-based startup called x.o.ware—create an encrypted personal virtual private network back to the user's home network to evade eavesdropping on untrusted Wi-Fi networks and secure traffic all the way back to a trusted exit. The result is, in theory, a fully private connection that provides the same level of security and privacy as you'd have working from your own home or business LAN—or, possibly, from one set up somewhere you're less likely to be packet-sniffed. And at just over $100 for the pair (the ExoNet will be $65, and the ExoKey will be $39), they will be price-competitive with some commercial VPN services and probably well worth the time you'd save by not having to configure and administer your own home office VPN.

Ars received a prototype of x.o.ware's hardware and beta software to determine whether the technology at the heart of the product, which is expected to start shipping some time this year, lived up to its promise. While the system is still in development, and there are still some fit and finish issues that need to be addressed before the products ship, I found that ExoNet and ExoKey were (in the most recent iteration of the early release software and firmware) fairly painless to set up and use. And they did a good job of protecting Web browsing sessions without the performance overhead of anonymizing networks. I did find some bugs along the way, which x.o.net is addressing and should be resolved in the shipping product.

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