Surfshark boosts protocol offering with new Wireguard support

VPN company Surfshark has added support for the popular Wireguard protocol across its mobile and computer apps.

On Tuesday (October 20th), the budget-friendly VPN announced that the protocol is now available for users of its Android, iOS, Windows and Mac applications.

Writing in a media release, the company said the open source protocol would "significantly improve VPN speeds" and pointed out that it is "faster than the widespread OpenVPN and IKEv2/IPSec protocols"

Surfshark went on to explain that it'll be offering the protocol with a double network address translation (NAT) system to improve the privacy of its users.

"As per popular request, we've rolled out WireGuard for all our users. It stands out in the overly engineered landscape of VPN protocols by offering faster speeds and lower ping times," said Gabrielle Racai, Communications manager at Surfshark.

"The protocol is also easier to audit code-wise, which amounts to its security. WireGuard is furtherly improving the overall performance of Surfshark VPN."

What sets this protocol apart from the competition is the fact that it doesn't rely on as much code and it has impressive cryptographic capabilities.

According to Surfshark, many other protocols are made up of around 400,000 lines of code. Yet when compared to OpenVPN and IPsec, Wireguard is comprised of just 1% of their total code.

Surfshark said this not only makes security audits "significantly more efficient", but means the protocol is "less susceptible to security vulnerabilities, as it's easier to manage and configure."

"WireGuard encrypts users' data using thoroughly tested, modern ChaCha20, Curve25519, BLAKE2s, SipHash24, HKDF cryptography,'' continued Surfshark. "The VPN protocol provides rotating keys for perfect forward secrecy. The quote-on-quote connectionless protocol minimizes packet loss during handshakes while providing users with smooth performance."

Surfshark currently allows users to choose between several different secure protocols, including IKEv2/IPsec, OpenVPN UDP and Shadowsocks. If you're a Surfshark user and want to enable Wireguard, just update your app and you'll be able to select the protocol in the settings.

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