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VPN: VPNs and DNS Leaks

This video goes through how to test whether you have a domain name server (DNS) leak that exposes your IP address.
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6.7
So another thing about VPNs are, what they should do is they should mask your proper IP address. So one way to test this is with a DNS leak test and essentially, what a DNS leak test does is, it makes sure that your real DNS is not being leaked. And what that means is your IP address, your real IP address should be completely different when you’re running VPN and you go out to the internet. Again, that’s part of the process of VPN. It hides your IP address. It hides your traffic, and what you’re doing. It’s all encrypted. So what I always recommend is when you’re considering a VPN, run a DNS leak test. Make sure it’s working properly.
53.2
So if it’s working properly, your real IP address should not show up in a DNS leak test. And you can go to dnsleaktest.com, and then either you could do a standard or a extended test. So quite simply, once you go on, there it should give you IP address. That shouldn’t be your real IP address. And then you could do a standard test, or you could do a extended test. And once you click it, it will go through the test. And it will give you some basic information. Also, shouldn’t give you what your real ISP is. So, in this case, I have 192.69.203.71, which is not my real IP address. Hostname, it wasn’t able to pull that.
103.8
And the ISP, Leaseweb-USA-wdc, that’s actually a VPN ISP. So that’s not my real ISP either. So, in my case, I’m running Proton VPN, so it did properly mask my IP address, did mask my ISP, which is great. And in this case, I chose ISP for the United States, so it showed the proper country. Another advantage to a VPN is, if you’re, say, doing an OSINT investigation, you’re doing a investigation in another country, say Russia, or the Netherlands, Australia, what not, you may actually end up in a Australian forum doing those investigation on individual, you probably want to use a VPN for a couple of reasons. A VPN, again, encrypts your traffic.
166.8
And then you can potentially pick a VPN location from Australia. That way, when you go in the Australian forum, they don’t see a US IP address and essentially raise any flags. It looks like a Australian user accessing the Australian forum. So that’s another advantage to a VPN. So wrapping up, VPNs can help protect our privacy by encrypting our traffic, hiding our real IP address, and hiding our location and ISP. VPNs can route our traffic through different connections, throughout our locations generally, throughout, say, in my case, the United States or even other countries. So not all VPNs are going to be the same. So definitely do your research before you buy or use a VPN.
224.7
VPNs are also used to sometimes fight censorship. And always run a DNS leak test on your VPN to make sure that it’s properly routing your traffic and it’s not making your real DNS.
239.8
So this was about VPNs. And in next video, we’re going to be talking about logs and auditing. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you in the next video.

This video goes through how to test whether you have a domain name server (DNS) leak that exposes your IP address.

When you access the internet and your DNS is not masked, malicious individuals can see your IP address and your physical location.

In this video, you see how an IP address can be used to identify the location of the user if there is a DNS leak and how to check whether you have a DNS leak.

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You have covered all the new content for this week! In the following step, you will complete a test to assess your understanding of what you have learned within this past week of the course.

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This content is taken from
EC-Council online course,

Advanced Cyber Security Training: Network Security

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This content is taken from EC-Council online course
Advanced Cyber Security Training: Network Security
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