An intriguing paper from a PhD student in Ontario summarizes a system which in first evaluations has proved 97% successful at unmasking geo-spoofing VPN users, for example Netflix customers who falsify their geographical place to be able to obtain catalogs beyond their state.

The Client Existence Verification (CPV) system presented in the paper utilises evaluation of delays in network packets to be able to find out the user’s place, disregarding the IP address geolocation info which now underpins the attempts of content providers like Netflix to prevent VPN users getting content that is not licensed in their own state.

The discovery system was examined at international network lab PlanetLab using 80 network nodes located in the U.S. and Canada. Someone trying to falsify their present place can use One Way Delays (OWDs) to control the receiver’s estimate of geographic space. Nevertheless, a lot of mutual info is exchanged between the user’s actual place as well as the supplier’s point of service – delays that might not correspond together with the IP address that a VPN or proxy service is volunteering to the provider.

The authors reason: ‘The layout of CPV supplies deployability edges and several security. It beats IP- concealment strategies commonly carried out using middleboxes, since delays are quantified over the application layer of the client. Also, CPV needs no clientside changes, and no additional software is needed; the present browsing experience of the client is kept as the verification procedure runs in the browser. These edges as well as the real-world assessment results emphasize the possibility for practical adoption of CPV.’