Meet Dausos, Surfshark's 'paradise' VPN protocol that seeks to raise the bar for speed and security | Tech Radar
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Meet Dausos, Surfshark's 'paradise' VPN protocol that seeks to raise the bar for speed and security
The new system comes fully packed with quantum-resistant capabilities
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Surfshark has rolled out its own bespoke protocol, Dausos
Quantum-resistant cryptography further boosts security
Surfshark has just unveiled its very own custom VPN protocol, Dausos.
Surfshark's new cutting-edge protocol promises to beat the best VPNs on the market by offering record-breaking speeds up to 30% faster than its competitors and a dedicated tunnel for each user.
Currently available for mac OS users and coming soon to other platforms, the protocol — whose name means ‘paradise’ in Lithuanian — also comes loaded with new post-quantum encryption designed to make your digital life even more blissful.
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Tech Radar's readers have only one week to claim Surfshark's exclusive deal and save 88% when signing up to one of its two-year plans. For the equivalent of
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Unlike protocols such as Wire Guard and Open VPN, which route all user traffic through a single digital tunnel, Dausos' system provides each user with their own private, exclusive data channel.
By isolating each user’s data, it aims to effectively eliminate slowdowns caused by other users — particularly at peak times — ensuring a smoother experience while protecting travelling data packets from external interference.
Additionally, the system adapts to network and device conditions, intelligently routing users' data packets according to their network configuration for better results.
"This ensures optimised performance tailored to the user’s specific network configuration," Surfshark explains.
The obvious victory? Less overall processing translates into speedier connections, with Surfshark claiming its system is now nearly a third faster than its rivals.
To make it even more bliss-filled, Surfshark has also packed it with many innovative security features.
A built-in root certificate issuance system enhances the protection and authentication of users' connections by using the ML-DSA signature scheme. This innovative digital signature algorithm ensures the sender is genuine and data shared remains unaltered, positioning itself at the forefront in the adoption of post-quantum secure certificate schemes.
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To further ramp up its next-gen capabilities, the protocol has also introduced a hybrid key exchange mechanism (X25519MLKEM768), which combines the established X25519 cryptographic system with a more recent NIST-approved quantum-safe algorithm, ML-KEM, improving protection of user data against both current and future quantum attacks.
This follows Surfshark's January rollout of post-quantum encryption into Wire Guard across mac OS, Linux, and Android.
The protocol also enhances session control, specifically focusing on boosting key management security. Thanks to the implementation of post-compromise security (PCS), the system protects users' digital realms by always generating a new key every time a new connection is established.
This ensures that, should a key be compromised, hackers cannot intercept further communications or decrypt any future messages generated by that key.
Furthermore, a post-randomisation technique brings security to new heights by establishing varying port connections, unlike more traditional systems that instead connect to a fixed server.
"With Dausos, every session is connected via a randomised port address to a server, like changing your gate every time you fly," explains Karolis Kaciulis, Leading System Engineer at Surfshark.
The protocol was recently audited by Cure 53, a Berlin-based cybersecurity consultancy. The firm examined the connection architecture and encryption features, concluding that there were no critical or serious vulnerabilities, thereby paving the way for its wider adoption.
With the latest release, it seems clear that Surfshak is in the midst of a major development phase and intends to continue improving its product in terms of overall performance, having recently upgraded its network with industry-first 100 Gbps servers to potentially handle significantly more data capacity than today’s fastest VPNs.
Recently appointed CEO Dovydas Godelis told us a month ago that the VPN’s mission remained “to become the Revolut of cybersecurity”. Looking at the rollout of this new cutting-edge protocol, it seems he wasn’t kidding. Which leaves us wondering: what further surprises might the company have in store?
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Silvia Iacovcich is a tech journalist with over five years of experience in the field, including AI, cybersecurity, and fintech. She has written for various publications focusing on the evolving regulatory landscape of AI, digital behavior, web 3, and blockchain, as well as social media privacy and security regulations.
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Meet Dausos, Surfshark's 'paradise' VPN protocol that seeks to raise the bar for speed and security
