- Surfshark VPN adds WireGuard protocol support on all platforms, including mobile clients.
- Users’ privacy is ensured through a double network address translation system that assigns different IP addresses each time.
- Surfshark has been using RAM-only servers since July this year, so it’s a no-logs VPN service provider.
Surfshark VPN has announced the WireGuard protocol support roll-out on all platforms (Windows, macOS, Android, iOS). This move puts the product on the same club as TorGuard, NordVPN, Private Internet Access, and IVPN, whose users all enjoy the superior speeds and connection stability that comes with the WireGuard protocol.
WireGuard brings a set of advantages like a leaner and cleaner code base that makes it easier to audit and maintain, support for new and more advantageous cryptographic schemes, and amazing server connection and reconnection speeds.
In the case of Surfshark, the following cryptographic protocols are supported:
- ChaCha20 for symmetric encryption, authenticated with Poly1305
- Curve25519 for ECDH
- BLAKE2s for hashing and keyed hashing
- SipHash24 for hashtable keys
- HKDF for key derivation
Moreover, there is a frequent key rotation system to make handshakes smooth, secure, and without risking packet data losses. On the matter of securing user privacy, each VPN vendor follows its approach, and in the case of Surfshark, we have a “double network address translation (NAT)” system.
This is to help overcome the privacy problems that are introduced from the use of a static IP address. Thanks to NAT, users are getting a different IP through a dynamic address generation and distribution scheme, so there is no incentive to save identifiable data and try to track anyone.
Surfshark is using “barebones” servers anyway, which use only RAM modules to handle all the necessary processes. Thus, there are no disks to store any user data on any of the 1,700 servers operated by the VPN vendor. The move to RAM-only servers was completed this summer, so the WireGuard support comes to complement the product’s service very nicely.
In our in-depth review of Surfshark, which was before the WireGuard support had landed, we still praised the product for its speed and performance, although it had margins for improvement. In general, Surfshark scored 9.5 out of a perfect 10, so it’s beyond doubt one of the best in terms of privacy, security, platform support, ease of use, streaming, and customer support.