Civilsphere AI VPN
The privacy and security of our devices is key for a trusted Internet, but surveillance and attacks jeopardize them. We have VPNs, but no automatic protection. This project will research and implement an automated, easy to install, locally deployed VPN running novel protection software that analyses your network traffic to automatically find attacks, infections, targeted threats, and data leaks. When your device is at risk, the VPN will automatically block your traffic. Is not about the VPN, is about how it protects you.
All the detections will be implemented with state-of-the-art machine learning models trained on real attacks. Machine learning that is usually reserved for large companies. The VPN will be based on our Emergency VPN project, but with many new improvements. Detections will be based on our Stratosphere Linux IPS (Slips) tool, but with many new detections. The system will be prepared to run at home, inside organizations or in cloud services, trying to federate the protection of devices.
Financial Support
This project is financially Supported by NLNET Foundation.
Team
Assistant Professor Sebastian Garcia, PhD
Sebastian Garcia is a malware researcher and security teacher with experience in applied machine learning on network traffic. He founded the Stratosphere Lab, aiming to do impactful security research to help others using machine learning. As Assistant Professor and researcher, he believes that free software and machine learning tools can help better protect users from abuse of our digital rights. He researches on machine learning for security, honeypots, malware traffic detection, social networks security detection, distributed scanning (dnmap), keystroke dynamics, fake news, Bluetooth analysis, privacy protection, intruder detection, and microphone detection with SDR (Salamandra). He taught in several Universities and worked on penetration testing for both corporations and governments. He talked in conferences such as BlackHat, Defcon Villages, Ekoparty, DeepSec, Hackitivy, Botconf, Hacklu, InBot, SecuritySessions, ECAI, CitizenLab, ArgenCon, Free Software Foundation Europe, VirusBulletin, BSides Vienna, HITB Singapore, CACIC, AAMAS, etc. He co-founded the MatesLab hackspace in Argentina and co-founded the Independent Fund for Women in Tech.
Veronica Valeros is a senior researcher and project leader at the Stratosphere Research Laboratory in the Czech Technical University in Prague. She has more than 9 years of experience in cyber security.
Veronica's research strongly focuses on helping people. She currently specializes in threat intelligence, malware traffic analysis, and data analysis. She has made her career in both industry and academia.
In her current position as a project leader, Veronica helps driving forward the research and development projects, improves processes, and drives the community engagement of the groups she works with. As a senior researcher, Veronica's is responsible for the research, development, and customer support at the Civilsphere project, dedicated to protecting civil society organizations and individuals at risk from targeted digital threats.
Veronica has presented her research at international conferences such as Black Hat, EkoParty, Botconf, Virus Bulletin, Deepsec, and others. She is the co-founder of the MatesLab hackerspace based in Argentina and co-founder of the Independent Fund for Women in Tech.