Have you ever had an idea you couldn’t quite shake? Something that worms it’s way into your brain for one reason or another and just wont leave. Always on the backburner, thinking about it in the shower every day, in the bed as you go to sleep at night, zoning out in the living room, for as long as you can remember?
I was a Private Internet Access (PIA) customer for many, many years. Some recent changes spurred me to look for a new VPN provider and I ended up landing on ProtonVPN which I’ve been using for a few months now. And I noticed something… TCP (SYN, ACK) messages aren’t “real” when using ProtonVPN. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing or a good thing or even a thing that most people notice because it’s generally not problematic. But it is a non-standard VPN thing that I noticed, so I wanted to write about it from the practical perspective of a user, how it works at a high level, and why something like this is being done.
Symbian OS, Android, Radio Frequencies, BTSNOOZ, BTSNOOP, and getting kicked in the teeth. Below follows a chronicling of deciding to explore Bluetooth by hacking the firmware for a Fitbit Smartwatch and realizing I was in way over my head and slowly trying to regain any hope of understanding.