Page 57 - Cyber Defense Magazine for August 2020

WireGuard - Separating Fact from Fiction

By Tomislav Čohar, co-founder, hide.me VPN

Offering high speeds, excellent levels of security and a low footprint, WireGuard has rightly caused ripples
within the VPN industry. WireGuard is an open-source protocol that employs cutting-edge cryptography
and provides fierce competition for the likes of IPsec and OpenVPN. As a user then, what advances can
you expect from WireGuard? Has this protocol been over-hyped and are we just seeing a flurry of smoke
and mirrors from a biased media?

WireGuard certainly offers a lower footprint - it was made to be as lightweight as possible and can be
implemented with just a few thousand lines of code. The resulting reduced attack surface is certainly a
benefit and also makes auditing the code a much more straightforward process. Users enjoy the benefits
of being able to switch seamlessly from something like Wi-FI to 4G LTE due to WireGuard’s built-in
roaming capabilities. Also, WireGuard uses your network more adroitly than other VPN protocols. With a
mere 32 bytes overhead, it trumps other protocols that use much more space for their signaling. As a
user, you get more space for your data with higher throughput.

WireGuard is a remarkably fast protocol that doesn’t skimp on security. This is thanks to the use of
modern and efficient cryptography constructs. WireGuard works from within the Linux kernel meaning
that it can process data faster, eliminating much of the latency associated with other protocols. Keeping

Cyber Defense eMagazine – August 2020 Edition 57
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