df here, just noticed this thread so thought I might as well comment on some of what was said:
(yea, yea, I know. I don't visit the forum often enough.)
Question is: what will be the future of Crypto VPN?
CS will continue regardless of whatever happens to PJ.
You know PJ has basically nothing at all to do with the day to day operations of CryptoStorm, right? He's been MIA due to his legal issues for most of the time since last autumn. He was only back for a couple of weeks.
This is true. PJ hasn't had any access to the day to day stuff since the beginning of 2015. In his recent return the only thing he was given access to was his personal email account, his forum account, and twitter (although we kept a close eye on what was being said on the latter, just so we knew whether or not to pull the plug on him).
Fermi and df have it handled. We will be fine.
This is also true 
Sure, maybe he hasn't been a part of the cryptostorm operations for a while, but it's still strange how the admins have been acting. For the time being, I've switched VPNs until this gets properly sorted out and discussed.
In our defense, we're pretty strange even when PJ is around.
As a side note, I'm not shilling for any other providers. I like cryptostorm because they're fast, have plenty of servers and I'm interested to see where voodoo goes. But if there is any opaqueness with the service and how it's run, then my trust level will obviously be lower and I'd have to consider full time switching to another provider. I doubt PJ would snitch on any of the more questionable users considering his past, but reassuring us that the network is secure isn't the right way to go about it..
We've always been pretty open about the structure of the network. There's no "secret knowledge" PJ has that could be used against CS, because we're so open about CS internals. Even if PJ was ever offered some kind of deal, I know him well enough to know that regardless of whatever state of mind he's currently in, that option would never even register as a possibility.
Either way, I hope cryptostorm can figure things out and explain in a reasonable manner, I'd sure like to come back.
We've chosen not to publicly comment on the details of his current situation because they are personal and unrelated to CS.
Looking at Pattern_Juggled's profile on this forum shows he's not a moderator anymore maybe not staff either?
For security reasons, the small amount of access he was given on his most recent return has been completely revoked (forum, email, twitter, etc.).
I really like the guys verbiage and knowledge, and this lot do need a more chatty type at times. But could you imagine running a privacy related business when the Front was getting dramatically arrested, effectively publicly, for weird&&||chaotic shit all the time?
PJ is very knowledgeable in the field of cryptography and the theoretical aspects of network topologies, which made his posts here interesting, and valuable. That amount of information can take days/weeks to compile into a single coherent post, and I'm usually too busy with the server-side and widget dev stuff to spend that much time on those types of things. Unfortunately, whenever PJ gets arrested I have to pop into the public side of things and reassure everyone that CS is still just fine, and will continue to grow.
I'm sure that the rest of the admin team have had it with his bullshit. If nothing else, he is certain harming the reputation of this place
At this point, I think that the publicity gained from PJ's positive contributions to CS are being greatly overshadowed by the amount of bad publicity that come from his arrests. It is highly possible that he is completely innocent in this most recent incident, but regardless, it still hurts our reputation every time something like this happens.
He is one of the main reasons I never personally sign up for your service as it would be benefiting him financially secondly with his knowledge of interworking of the service there is no telling what would do in order to reduce his sentence e.g. compromising keys et cetera
Just to be clear, PJ currently receives no money from CS, nor does he have access to any of the CS financial accounts. As I've stated earlier, his "knowledge of interworking of the service" is something that we've published openly. It's not secret. As for the parts that are secret for security reasons (TLS/SSL keys, etc.), he's never had access to them. He hasn't had access to any of the nodes/servers since the beginning of 2015, and even then I knew every single command he executed, so I would have known if he copied them off to another server. Plus, he really doesn't have as much experience with Linux security as I do, and he wouldn't know how to disable the different logging mechanisms I have in place or the monitors that are there to alert us in the unlikely event that a server is ever compromised.
I think I'm not the only one who has been turned off your service by his involvement
Yea, even if he's completely innocent of all the charges from his past that everyone hears about every time he gets arrested, it still hurts the CS image.
I've gathered enough info from blog / forum posts (sometimes you have to dig deep to find the stuff) to feel like I know what's up, and it all seems rather personal / indirectly related to the cs service itself. Most of the protocol / design is talked about very openly - assuming what they say is true - it's designed to be resilient to server's being compromised or 'rouge admin'. I'm not aware of another service that has openly talked about a fraction of what I've read here.
"assuming what they say is true". This is the problem with using any VPN. A lot of providers will make fantastic claims about their security, but without root access to the server running OpenVPN you really have no clue what's going on server-side. We try to alleviate these concerns by avoiding meaningless marketing terms and instead provide technical (reproducible, therefore verifiable) details about our network structure and it's components.
Like I said above, PJ doesn't have much to do with the actual technical operation of the VPN services. If df suddenly disappears, it's time to jump ship.
Barring acts of god (brains eaten by zombies, ran over by an ice cream truck driven by Needles Kane, alien abduction, etc.), df will be around for many years to come
PJ is more of a stream-of-consciousness mouthpiece that is good at explaining stuff and waxing philosophical on issues related to privacy. I love reading what he says. I really don't care at all what he likes to do in his personal time.
Yep. He's always been more the public facing side of CS.
But to be fair, here's what people are concerned about: They think there is evidence that PJ has been a snitch before to get himself out of a rather lengthy sentence (this is just conjecture, we have no idea), and that he might sell out his VPN service into becoming a honeypot in order to get himself a reduced sentence again.
As mentioned above, I know PJ well enough to know that this would never happen, but in some alternate universe where he did try to sell out the VPN into becoming a honeypot, he simply doesn't have the access or know-how to pull off such a feat.
Personally, I think this idea is ridiculous. First of all, I don't think PJ has the mechanical ability to hand over anything. I think other people have the keys, and there's no way for him to turn it over. Secondly, I think CryptoStorm is his baby, and that he would rather rot in prison than compromise the core values that he espouses on here every day. That's the impression I get anyway. I think he would just as soon shut this whole company down than sell us all out to a government honeypot.
Yep, see above. And yes, as a co-creator (along with me and one other person), he would rather rot in prison than betray our clients. Same goes for me and the other co-creator. CS would be shut down long before it can be of any use to any misguided government agents.
All of you guys put out value points and has I said before, PJ is the heart and soul of CS, we all saw that the last time he was "out the picture" servers started to die, and news about CS in forum our some other form where almost nonexistent.
Just to clarify, servers didn't die last time PJ was "out of the picture" because of PJ. They died due to unrelated issues. It was abuse/DMCA mostly, and over-billing for rarely used servers that were better off replaced for something better (like majulah [malaysia]). Almost all of those dead servers have been replaced with others either in the same region or in a nearby one (miyamoto [japan]/majulah [malaysia] -> oldboy [south korea], etc. We're currently considering opening a new Japan node under the same provider as oldboy, but Japan data centers can be real bitchy when it comes to DMCA [it's why miyamoto died, even though DMCA is a god damn american law that has nothing to do with Japan. bah!).
I'm slowly starting to understand the social context. I wasn't even aware of role PJ had here, although I probably read some of his blog posts... his writing style is very similar to how my mind works
His writing style is a good representation of his mind. Highly intelligent, a little bit crazed, but when he sits down and takes the time to articulate those thoughts into something coherent, the output is usually pretty interesting.
I agree with what everyone said - and we need someone willing to 'hold the torch' and keep this idea alive or else the system will slowly fade away...
PJ burned his hand on the torch a few years back, so I've been holding onto it
I've always felt that this service runs better when PJ is about, but I'm not sure if that's a real thing or not...there certainly is a communication vacuum in his absence and I doubt finding a replacement is possible.
I'll agree that less is said in the public areas when PJ isn't around, but that's only because we're busy focusing on the stuff going on behind the scenes. We would rather the network continue to run smoothly than worry about what tweets are trending, or whatever the hell you call it.
I hope that information helps anyone who's concerned about CS or PJ's integrity. I'll go back to finishing up the v3 widget for a proper stable release. Also, I went ahead and ordered a new secondary Switzerland node because you torrent monkeys have been hitting that one up pretty hard. That should balance things out enough that nobody will have anymore speed problems during the busy hours. Oh and I've ordered a new node in Oslo, Norway, for no real reason. We'll do a proper announcement once those two get provisioned.
Statistics: Posted by df — Mon Apr 25, 2016 9:04 am