Outline VPN is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

tool that deploys

Shadowsocks Shadowsocks is a free and open-source Cryptographic protocol, encryption protocol project, widely used in mainland China, China to circumvent Internet censorship in China, Internet censorship. It was created in 2012 by a Chinese programmer name ...

servers on multiple cloud service providers. The software suite also includes

client software In computing, a client is a piece of computer hardware or software that accesses a service made available by a server as part of the client–server model of computer networks. The server is often (but not always) on another computer system, in ...

for multiple platforms. Outline was developed by

Jigsaw Jigsaw may refer to: * Jigsaw (tool), a tool used for cutting arbitrary curves * Jigsaw puzzle, a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of interlocking pieces Arts and media Comics * Jigsaw (Marvel Comics), a supervillain and arch-enemy of ...

, a

technology incubator Business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services starting with management training and office space and ending with venture ca ...

created by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

. /sup> The Outline Server supports self-hosting, as well as cloud service providers including

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. () is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York, USA, with 15 globally distributed data centers worldwide. DigitalOcean provides ...

, Rackspace,

Google Cloud Platform Google Cloud Platform (GCP), offered by Google, is a suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search, Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube. Alongside ...

, and

Amazon EC2 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ...

. Installation involves running a command on its

command-line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

, or in the case of installing on DigitalOcean or Google Cloud, its

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

Components

Outline has three main components: * The Outline Server acts as a

proxy Proxy may refer to: * Proxy or agent (law), a substitute authorized to act for another entity or a document which authorizes the agent so to act * Proxy (climate), a measured variable used to infer the value of a variable of interest in climate re ...

and relays connections between the client and the sites they want to access. It is based on

, and offers a REST API for management of the server by the Outline Manager application. * The Outline Manager is a graphical application used to deploy and manage access to Outline Servers. It supports

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. * The Outline Client connects to the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

via the Outline Server. It supports

, ChromeOS,

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

, and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

Security and privacy

Outline uses the

protocol for communication between the client and server. Traffic is encrypted with the

IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

ChaCha20 Salsa20 and the closely related ChaCha are stream ciphers developed by Daniel J. Bernstein. Salsa20, the original cipher, was designed in 2005, then later submitted to the eSTREAM European Union cryptographic validation process by Bernstein. Ch ...

stream cipher stream cipher is a symmetric key cipher where plaintext digits are combined with a pseudorandom cipher digit stream (keystream). In a stream cipher, each plaintext digit is encrypted one at a time with the corresponding digit of the keystream ...

(

256-bit There are currently no mainstream general-purpose processors built to operate on 256-bit integers or addresses, though a number of processors do operate on 256-bit data. Representation A 256-bit register can store 2256 different values. The range ...

key Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm * Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock * Key (map ...

) and authenticated with the IETF Poly1305 authenticator. Outline is

, licensed under the Apache License 2.0, and was audited by Radically Open Security and claims not to

log Log most often refers to: * Trunk (botany), the stem and main wooden axis of a tree, called logs when cut ** Logging, cutting down trees for logs ** Firewood, logs used for fuel ** Lumber or timber, converted from wood logs * Logarithm, in mathe ...

users'

web traffic Web traffic is the data sent and received by visitors to a website. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are ...

. The Outline Server supports unattended upgrades. Outline is not a true VPN solution but rather a Shadowsocks-based

. The two technologies are similar in the way they can be used to redirect network traffic and make it appear as originating from another device (the server), and hide the traffic's final destination from observers and filters until it reaches the proxy server. However, a VPN has additional capabilities, such as encapsulating traffic within a virtual tunnel, and allowing connected devices to "see" each other (as if they were connected to a

LAN Lan or LAN may also refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in sp ...

). Outline is not an

anonymity Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Some writers have argued that namelessness, though technically correct, does not capture what is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea he ...

tool, and it does not provide the same degree of anonymity protections as

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia Sc ...

, which routes traffic through three

hops Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant ''Humulus lupulus'', a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to whi ...

rather than just one and also protects against attacks like browser fingerprinting.

Critical reception

In March 2018, Max Eddy of '' PCMag'' stated that a preview version of Outline VPN was "startlingly easy to use" and "removes privacy concerns associated with VPN companies". However, Eddy criticized the software for not encrypting all traffic on

, and warned users that "individual use may lack some anonymity compared olarge VPN companies". Since version 1.2, the Outline Windows client came out of 'Beta', effectively beginning to encrypt all traffic from the device, on par with the Outline clients for

, ChromeOS,

, and

References

External links

* {{Internet censorship circumvention technologies Virtual private networks Free security software Free server software 2018 software Free proxy servers Alphabet Inc.

Components

Security and privacy

Critical reception

See also

References

External links