# Critical Sarcasm for the knees

# Old Ass Sudotask

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## Kickstarter: VPEx

VPEx is a hardware based VPN solution with the idea that you can make any open wifi access point more secure, or as the project itself states, " Connect to the Internet from anywhere with the same security you have at home, without anyone holding your keys and charging you fees."

The VPEx seems to be a legitimate way to make things a bit more secure when you are out in the wild with your computer. The hardware based solution makes is more secure than using simply software methods in the case that the computer happens to be compromised. However, if there is malware on the computer there is a chance all data coming in and out will be watched, but it should protect your home/office network from becoming vulnerable.

## How does it work?

There are two parts to this system: the ExoKey that you need to keep with your computer, and the ExoNet which is connected to your home or office netowork.

The initial setup of the network is quite easy. After connecting your ExoNet to your home/office network, you plug the ExoKey into it, fireup a computer on the LAN, go to the websever provided by the ExoNet, and then register the devices with each other and set a password. Not too much effort at all.

The next time you are at your local coffee shop that has open wifi, plug in your ExoKey, run the app, and put in your password. Congratulations, now all your data is being routed to the ExoKey, which then encrypts it, sends it out to whichever ExoNet you choose, which then in turn decrypts it and sends it out to its destination.

Now it's time for the data to come back, the ExoNet receives the data, encrypts it, sends it back to your ExoKey, which then decrypts it, and now your data is displayed on your computer. Completely safe from any attacks other people in the coffee shop, or indeed the coffee shop itself, may try against you.

## How much? Take my money!

A mere $99 will get you one ExoKey and one ExoNet for a very quick and easy VPN setup. For people who travel a lot, and are concerned about their privacy/security, this is an amazing starting point. Not only is this price point great for the consumer, but it shows that the project leaders are not trying to under bid themselves and may actually know what they are doing.

There are several other pledge levels beyond that, with the exception of one that will sell you two gateways and one key, which simply increase the number of ExoKeys that will ship with your ExoNet. In the case that you have a family that uses open wifi a lot, these other pledge levels may be more appropriate.

## Will they actually make it?

Who knows? At the time of this writing, they still have 39 days to go with 12 backers. If they get their funding level of $50,000, I could see this product becoming a reality. $99 seems more than reasonable so long as they are able to get the parts from manufactures. There is not much to these units, they claim that there will not be any hand soldered parts, everything will be automated. Even the enclosures will simply snap together around the boards.

## So should I buy this?

This device will make it ridiculously easy to setup a VPN. That alone is worth the $99 entry point. As mentioned before, if you use public wifi, even if it's not technically open and they give you a password at the desk or something, you need to be able to trust them.

If a hotel offers wifi and gives you the password, your data should be encrypted and protected from other people trying to listen in on your data signals, but if the hotel is trying to steal your data... well they won't be able to if you are using this setup.

## Will it actually ship?

x.o.ware, inc, the company behind the VPEx, claims that everything is almost ready to start production. By the time their campaign ends, they should be able to have accurate numbers to give to their manufactures. They seem really confident that they are ready to ship. It wouldn't surprise me if this Kickstarter actually delivers on time.

In the future they plan to include mobile phone support, right now you just plug the thing into a USB slot on a laptop. Not sure how they plan on supporting mobile, but it should be interesting. Mobile hotspot maybe? They also want to allow ExoNets to register with each other. This will basically make it possible to join multiple networks together to make one big VPN.

Example:

My friend and I have ExoNets setup and registered with each other. I trust my friend so we have one big VPN where we can share devices. In our homes we decided we want security and setup some cameras. We don't want to use any over the Internet solutions where the company who sold me the camera also gets to watch us in our homes.

I'm out and about and connect to one of our ExoNets. Now my computer is directly connected to our VPN which means I can directly access the cameras as if I was actually there on one of our local networks. Bypassing any possible security/privacy issues I may have with the camera vendors or other software.

Example end

There are tons of services and devices that people run on their LAN and don't allow access directly over the Internet. Using something like this will allow you to easily setup a VPN and have secure access no matter where you are in the world.

Wow, this is a big one. Haven't written a post this big in a long time, but this is a really cool device. I haven't yet put any money down on one of these, but I am seriously considering it. A quick and easy VPN solution, which seems to be what this really is, would be amazing to have on hand.

# Comments

### x.o.ware

Thanks for the post about VPEx – it isn’t easy to describe it, but you did a great job.

We will most definitely ship these products, as we mentioned on today’s update on Kickstarter, regardless of whether or nor we meet our goal there. We don’t need the campaign to fund development or get us into manufacturing, but getting people to financially commit to us is a huge help, and is greatly appreciated, as a vote of confidence and an endorsement of our approach.

As for mobile, we want to let you plug the ExoKey into a phone or tablet, so you can use its wi-fi connection with the same security you have on a laptop. The ExoKey is small enough to slap on the back of a phone, although we will have to provide a custom adapter so it fits reliably and without sinificantly increasing the space the phone takes up. The bigger challenge, however, will be making the mobile OS’s work with the ExoKey.

We don’t expect this to be a problem for Android 4.3 or newer (just some custom driver development), but iOS will be more complicated. While the latest versions of Android support a VPN device like ours, iOS does not. We don’t like the idea of copying encryption keys from the ExoKey to an iPhone, even if they are just temporarily stored there, for then it creates a mechanism for reading keys from our device (and any computer that emulates the user’s phone could extract keys from the ExoKey). If Apple does not allow us to send unecrypted packets to the ExoKey for encryption, we won’t have much choice.

We may also add the capability to provide local encryption (between an ExoKey and the wi-fi access point) on the ExoNet, so that any wi-fi operator can add VPEx security to their network, by just plugging an ExoNet into their network. However, to make this useful, we need to provide a way for people to securely register their ExoKey with an ExoNet they don’t have physical access to, and that will take a little more time.

Thanks again for your support.