CyberGhost VPN 5.1.0 (iOS / App Store) on 2016-4-17
Here's our first app what we're going to tell you. CyberGhost VPN developed for iOS. What does this app do (quote from application market page):
It connects you to the CyberGhost network, protects all your data inside a strong encrypted tunnel, so you can’t be hacked on public networks. It will open the Internet for all your purposes like watching blocked content and censored websites, while all along your IP identity is safely hidden from prying eyes. The CyberGhost App supports the most secure L2TP VPN protocol with IPSec, a separate encryption technology, and gets you in no time into the Internet by providing you a profile for each country available in the worldwide CyberGhost network. With just a few swipes you get to surf the web as a French man, a German, an US citizen, or any other of 30 different nationalities. Your benefits in a nutshell: •As an anonymized surfer your private data is safe and secure against trackers and data miners •Rest safe at public networks like hotspots and Internet cafés, for your data can’t be hacked •Watch your favorite videos and listen to your favorite music even abroad and in countries where such content is blocked CyberGhost VPN restores your online privacy, keeps you safe and let you surf freely.
However, this app has potential issues with protecting your data before connect. What does it mean? First time you run this app, you will have to assign your license information. After you authorized as a valid customer, you need to download configuration file known as profile (iOS - profile) that stores information for VPN mechanism implemented by Apple into your mobile devices iPhone & iPad. Same happens each time you need to change this profile. Why you may need to change this profile? If you want to choose another specific server located in specific country or just any server in specific country you will have to download this profile again. Here we go. Despite of protection you granted from developers, you still can't be assure that you data is not leaked for eavesdroppers. They don't use any protection techniques here and make customers to download it via internet browser, so only system protection has a place here. Is it typical vulnerability? No, you might have to do something to let it happens, particularly you need to have a fake SSL certificate stored on your device. However, there're many way how this certificate can be installed on your device, including the case when you approve by yourself and when trusted certificate already pre-installed on your device was stolen by hackers and can't be trusted anymore. Also, you data can be leaked from your jailbroken device and your backups from PC/Mac. All these cases are based on software freely available over internet for free or funny prices $100-5000. Eventually, there're many hidden techniques aren't available for public we didn't know even that could be silently applied to your device offline or while you're connected to the network to get your data.
Also, it's important to know if developers implemented only vendor mechanisms offered by Apple or did something own.
First pic includes info about data items combined into groups and best protected items found.
Second pic includes info about data items separately from group and worst protected items found.
You can see the average values isn't high enough. Talking about data mentioned on the screenshots in terms of explanations given above, this application doesn't provide customers with own protection mechanisms neither for locally stored or transferred data we mentioned above.
The average protection level for locally stored data (DAR) equals 6 that means developer implemented only mechanisms offered by Apple if it requires. In this case, all data stored in sandbox and this is good protection, because it means your data can be extracted from backups according to wide available tools. However, as we mentioned above, if you have jailbroken iOS device it decreases level down to 0. Also, keep in mind there're lot of non-public solutions how to get your data.
The average protection level for transferred data (DIT) equals 4 for system protection part and less than 4 for own protection part that means developer didn't pay enough attention to protect your data from eavesdroppers and fake certificates. It's usual case for many developers but here it's really important to protection the initial connection & re-connection on profile changing any time it happens. Why is it? If anyone stole you tokens & app password or license data (these data stored and transferred without much protection) the most funny and simplest attack is removing all linked devices in your account that prevents you from connection to VPN servers (in other words, you get errors instead of protection).
Good news, no worst protected data type were found; bad news, no best protected data types were found in terms of protection.
Finally, keep in mind, that the latest app version and build was examined on the last iOS and if you use older iOS version < 9 you might have found that app doesn't secure enough and data might be accessed without actions from you side (= the average level for transferred data would be equal 2). Also, older iOS versions < 8.3 don't provide enough protection for app data locally stored to allow access app data (except system like keychain) without jailbreak access.