The Private Internet Access Tunnel for Apple platforms is now Open Source

Posted on Mar 26, 2018 by Christel Dahlskjaer

It was with a great deal of excitement that I was able to announce here on this blog that Private Internet Access would be releasing the source code for our client-side software, libraries and extensions.

We continue our open source efforts, and this week we are releasing the Private Internet Access Tunnel for Apple platforms.

The library provides a simplified Swift/Obj-C implementation of the OpenVPN® protocol for Apple platforms, while also taking advantage of the Private Internet Access client patch customisations. The crypto layer is built on top of OpenSSL 1.1.0g, which in turn enables support for a certain range of encryption and digest algorithms.

The client works with OpenVPN® 2.3+ servers. Key renegotiation and replay protection are also included, but fully-fledged configuration files (.ovpn) are not currently supported.

Theoretically, you can feed any custom CA to the client for TLS validation, but the handshake is restricted to the embedded root certificates from PIA when using the AppExtension module.

You can find the repository over at https://pia-foss.github.io and we hope that you will look at the code, comment and contribute so that we can continue to make privacy accessible to people everywhere.

And it seems fitting that we should be releasing our next repository while I am still on a high after returning from LibrePlanet, the Free Software Foundation’s annual event in Cambridge, MA. Private Internet Access is proud to sponsor the FSF, and we appreciate the opportunity to have been part of this year’s LibrePlanet. I had the opportunity to sit in on a number of interesting sessions and have left with plenty of food for thought for our continued free and open source software efforts.

I would like to extend huge congratulations on behalf of everyone here at Private Internet Access to Karen Sandler from the Software Freedom Conservancy on receiving the Award for the Advancement of Free Software, and to Public Lab for the Award for Projects of Social Benefit at LibrePlanet this weekend.

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit. (https://www.openssl.org/) .

OpenVPN is a registered trademark of OpenVPN Inc. (https://www.openvpn.net)