14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Private Internet Access (PIA), a VPN provider based in the US, announced that Russian authorities had seized its servers located in the country without notice.
The company is aware of no clear details as to why authorities took this step, but they presume it has something to do with a recent law adopted in the country stating that all Internet providers must log traffic up to one year.
PIA, which has built its business around the idea of not recording any user logs, thinks this may be the reason. As a result, the company has immediately discontinued its Russian gateways, announcing that it will no longer do business in the country.
Furthermore, to safeguard against authorities compromising its encryption, it will also be rotating all certificates used to encrypt customer traffic.
Updates to all VPN desktop clients and mobile apps are also in the works, which will now include support for the strongest encryption algorithms available today: AES-256, SHA-256, and RSA-4096.
By rotating certificates, PIA has made sure that the certificates that Russian authorities confiscated can't be used to intercept and sniff on current PIA communications.
"We’re going to be further evaluating other countries and their policies," a PIA spokesperson wrote in an announcement yesterday. "In any event, we are aware that there may be times that notice and due process are forgone. However, we do not log and are default secure against seizure."