Proton Technologies, the company best known for its privacy-focused email service ProtonMail, this week announced that the source code for all of its ProtonVPN virtual private network (VPN) applications has been made public after each app underwent independent security audits.
The source code for the Android, iOS, macOS and Windows versions of ProtonVPN are now available on GitHub, and the company has also published the results of security audits conducted by SEC Consult.
SEC Consult found that the Android app was affected by one medium-risk and four low-risk vulnerabilities. The iOS app had two low-risk flaws, while the Windows application had two medium-risk and two low-risk vulnerabilities. No security bugs were found in the macOS application.
SEC Consult pointed out in its audit reports that none of the vulnerabilities could have been exploited to decrypt encrypted VPN traffic. Some of the flaws may have allowed access to some user data, but exploitation required physical access to the victim’s device.
Proton, which a few months ago released the source code for its ProtonMail app for iOS, believes open source software is better in terms of safety and accountability, and the company plans on releasing all of its client-facing software as open source in the future.
“Open source code allows security researchers and the global security community to inspect how we implement encryption and how we handle your data, giving you more certainty that we are adhering to our strict privacy policy,” the ProtonVPN team said in a blog post. “Open source code provides security through transparency, meaning that because the code is heavily scrutinized, potential vulnerabilities are quickly spotted and fixed. This reduces the risk of a security vulnerability in a VPN app putting you at risk.”
Related: ProtonMail Accused of Voluntarily Helping Police Spy on Users
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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