AdGuard VPN is currently under active development, and 'Beta' tag indicates just that. We're constantly rolling out updates to make it better, and to be as effective as possible, we need user feedback. Feel free to contact us with bug reports and feature requests at support@adguard.com. AdGuard is a unique desktop program that has all the necessary features for the best web experience. The software combines the world's most advanced ad blocker for Windows, a whole privacy protection module, and a parental control tool — all working in any browser or app.

AdGuard Software Limited develops a line of ad blocking and privacy protection software for blocking pop-ups, banners, and web tracking, obscene content, malware and phishing. Some of AdGuard products are open-source, some are free, and some are shareware. Some products support Microsoft Windows, Linux, OS X, Android and iOS. A cross-platformutility, AdGuard is also available as an extension for the most widely used browsers, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, Yandex Browser, and Microsoft Edge.^[1]

Products[edit]

AdGuard products include:

AdGuard Home[edit]

Super talent driver download. AdGuard Home acts as a recursive DNS resolver, which responds with an invalid address for domains that appear in its filter lists quests.^[2] It is analogous to Pi-hole.

AdGuard Browser extensions[edit]

The browser extension blocks video ads, interstitial ads, floating ads, pop-ups, banners, and text ads.^[3] There is a possibility to handle anti-AdBlock scripts.^[4] The product also blocks spyware and warns users of malicious websites. AdGuard Content Blocker is an additional browser extension for browsers Yandex Browser and Samsung Internet, which uses Content Blocker API. It downloads filter list updates and asks browsers to enforce them via Content Blocker API.

AdGuard applications[edit]

AdGuard has Windows; Android and Mac versions,^[5] as well as native mobile versions for Android^[6] and iOS.^[7] The application sets up a local VPN, which intercepts and filters all traffic on the mobile device without sending it to a remote server.

AdGuard DNS[edit]

AdGuard hosts multiple free public DNS servers. Some of these servers provide DNS-level network filtering for blocking domains used for delivering advertisement, online tracking, analytics. The product supports encryption technologies, including DNSCrypt, DNS over HTTPS, DNS over TLS and DNS-over-QUIC.^[8] AdGuard DNS also comes with an optional 'Family Protection' mode for blocking access to websites with adult content as well as enforcing safe search in search engines.^[9]

AdGuard began testing DNS service back in 2016, and officially launched it in 2018.^[10]

Reception[edit]

While the company's products have earned positive feedback in several industry publications,^[11] a series of policies by Google and Apple app stores occurred in 2014 - 2018, which impeded user access to AdGuard's mobile applications.

Macworld mentioned AdGuard for iOS in a list of five 'best adblockers for iOS'.^[12]

In April 2020, Android Central stated that AdGuard uses 'a little more processing power to do its thing than uBlock Origin', but it is 'the best all-in-one blocking tool for someone who doesn't want to use more than one extension' because it blocks cryptomining. However, Android Central recommended uBlock Origin with a dedicated cryptomining blocker over AdGuard.^[13]

Research[edit]

AdGuard developers have taken up non-commercial research in order to inform wider audiences on user privacy, cybersecurity and data protection. The following issues are notable cases involving the developers:

• Top-ranked websites involved in cryptojacking^[14][15][16]
• FacebookAd Network widespread distribution^[17][18]
• Fake adblockers^[19][20]
• Popular Android and iOSappprivacy issues^{[21][22][23][24]}

Incidents[edit]

• Distribution of AdGuard for Android was discontinued by Google Play at the end of 2014. It nevertheless is still being updated and has been made available for download from the developers’ own website.^[25]
• AdGuard for iOS has not been updated since the summer of 2018 due to Apple policies against ad blocking, though it was still present in the Apple App Store.^[26][27][28] In summer 2019, access to the updates of AdGuard's earlier edition for iOS was restored.^[29]
• In September 2018, AdGuard was hit by credential stuffing attack. AdGuard claims that their servers were not compromised and instead attackers used credential pairs reused by victims on other sites and stolen from those other sites. According to company spokesperson, they 'do not know what accounts exactly were accessed by the attackers', so the company had reset passwords for all accounts 'as a precautionary measure'. Also, AdGuard pledged to use 'Have I Been Pwned?' API to check all new passwords for appearance in known public data leaks. Furthermore, they implemented a more strict password security requirements.^[30][31][32]

In November 2020, Microsoft Edge Store was infiltrated with fraudulent add-ons resembling add-ons for AgGuard VPN and few security products.^[33]

References[edit]

1. ^Andrew Orr 'AdGuard Pro is Being Discontinued due to App Store Policy', MacObserver.com, July 23, 2018
2. ^Chris Burns 'AdGuard Home is an ad-and-tracker blocker for your home', SlashGear.com, October 17, 2018
3. ^Eric Griffith 'The 18 Best Firefox Quantum Extensions', PC Magazine, February 12, 2018
4. ^James A. Martin 'The best Google Chrome extensions', Computerworld, August 10, 2017
5. ^Hougen, Aleksander. 'The 8 Best Ad Blockers That Play Nice With Chrome, Safari, Firefox in 2020'. Cloudwards. Cloudwards.net. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
6. ^Painter, Lewis. 'Best ad blocker for iPhone & iPad'. MacWorld. IDG Communications Ltd. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
7. ^Hindy, Joe. '5 best ad blocker apps for Android!'. Android Authority. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
8. ^Vasily Bagirov (December 15, 2020). 'AdGuard becomes the world's first public DNS-over-QUIC resolver!'. AdGuard. Archived from the original on December 17, 2020.
9. ^'A look at AdGuard DNS - gHacks Tech News'. www.ghacks.net. Retrieved November 2, 2020.
10. ^'AdGuard officially releases its own DNS service, and it works with Android Pie'. Android Police. December 29, 2018. Retrieved November 2, 2020.
11. ^Pedro Castro 'AdGuard 6.4 Controls intrusive ads and keeps your browsing history secure', Software.informer.com, October 29, 2018.
12. ^Painter, Lewis. 'The 5 best ad-blocking apps for iPhone & iPad'. Macworld UK. Retrieved November 2, 2020.
13. ^'The best Chrome extensions to protect your online privacy and security'. Android Central. April 30, 2020. Retrieved November 2, 2020.
14. ^Michael Kan 'Why Hackers Love Cryptocurrency Miner Coinhive', UK.PCMag, November 29, 2017
15. ^Anthony Cuthbertson 'Over 500 Million PCs Are Secretely Mining Cryptocurrency, Researchers Reveal', Newsweek, October 13, 2017
16. ^Charlie Osborne '500 million PCs are being used for stealth cryptocurrency mining online', Zero Day, October 13, 2017
17. ^Matthew Hughes 'Facebook tracking is present in 41% of the most popular Android apps', Thenextweb.com, March 23, 2018
18. ^Nadeem Sarwar 'Is #DeleteFacebook Enough? Here’s the Harsh Truth About Facebook Tracking Through Apps', Beebom.com, March 27, 2018
19. ^Cal Jeffrey 'AdGuard reports that 20 million Chrome users have malware infected ad blockers'Archived June 24, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Techspotl.com, April 19, 2018.
20. ^Harry Domanski 'Google has kicked five malicious ad blockers off the Chrome Store', Techradar.com, April 19, 2018.
21. ^Rei Padla 'GO Keyboard apps sends users’ data to servers and third parties, AdGuard says', AndroidCommunity.com, September 23, 2017
22. ^Adarsh Verma '11 Million Android, iOS, Chrome, And Firefox Users Infected By Spyware: Delete These Apps Now', Fossbytes.com, July 26, 2018
23. ^Wagas Amir 'Popular Android/iOS apps & Extensions collecting highly personal user data', Hackread.com, July 26, 2018
24. ^Catalin Cimpanu 'Chrome Extensions, Android and iOS Apps Caught Collecting Browsing Data'Archived August 19, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, BleepeingComputer.com, July 25, 2018
25. ^Daria Magdik 'Google Removes Adguard App From Google Play', AdGuard News, November 25, 2014
26. ^Andrew Orr 'AdGuard Pro is Being Discontinued due to App Store Policy', Macobserver.com, July 23, 2018
27. ^Andrew Orr 'Apple Won’t Say Why It Blocked AdGuard and Freedom', Macobserver.com, September 20, 2018
28. ^Abhishek Raj 'How to block ads on iPhone and iPad with AdGuard', Budding Geek, June 5, 2019
29. ^[1]
30. ^Zack Whittaker 'AdGuard resets all user passwords after account hacks', Techсrunch.com, September 20, 2018
31. ^Catalin Cimpanu 'AdGuard resets all user passwords after credential stuffing attack', ZeroDay, September 21, 2018
32. ^Tom McNamara 'All AdGuard ad blocker account passwords have been reset to fight off hackers', CNET, September 21, 2018
33. ^Dan Goodin 'Abusive add-ons aren’t just a Chrome and Firefox problem. Now it’s Edge’s turn', ArsTechnica, November 21, 2020

What is HTTPS?

HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) is an extension of the HTTP protocol that supports encryption to increase security. This protocol is used to securely transmit valuable information like personal data, credit card details, etc.

Using HTTPS is strictly advantageous, since encrypted traffic is protected from ‘eavesdropping’ by third parties, and we can only welcome this. HTTPS spread has been on the rise in the recent years, mostly because it is being encouraged by Google, and also due to the emergence of a free certification center Let’s Encrypt.

The diagram below describes the difference between plain HTTP protocol and secure HTTPS protocol. Panasonic others driver download.

What is a security certificate?

Simply put, HTTPS means data encryption. But there’s still a problem: how can you be sure you’ve established an encrypted connection with exactly the website you intended to? That’s where security certificates come into play. The certificate is proof that the website is actually what it tells you it is. If a website doesn’t have such certificate, or the certificate contains incorrect information, the browser won’t let you establish a secure connection. It is important that the certificate a website uses was issued by a certification authority (CA) trusted by your browser. Such CA guarantees that the SSL certificate is, indeed, issued to the website’s owner.

Why does AdGuard need to be able to filter HTTPS?

The thing is, more and more websites, blogs, social media, etc. switch to HTTPS every day. And following blogs and websites, more ad networks switch to HTTPS too, because it becomes necessary to display ads on the HTTPS-based website. Here are few examples of popular websites, where you can’t remove ads without filtering the HTTPS: youtube.com, facebook.com, twitter.com.

How does HTTPS filtering work?

If it were easy, HTTPS wouldn’t be that secure. Upon browser’s attempt to connect to a server, AdGuard establishes two secure connections: one with the browser (or another app), and the other with the server. It is crucial that browser trusts AdGuard and the connections created by it. For this purpose, AdGuard generates a special (and unique) root certificate and installs it into the system and, when it is required, into some browsers too (e.g. Firefox). Thus, AdGuard can see what is happening inside of the secure connection and do its job - block ads and tracking.

For better understanding we depicted this process:

Does my traffic remain encrypted and secure?

Of course! Your connection with a remote server remains encrypted and secure. AdGuard, just as your browser, checks the server’s certificate before deciding whether to filter it or not.

Nevertheless, HTTPS filtering has its drawbacks. The most important of them is the fact that it hides from the browser the real certificate that the website uses. Instead, the browser sees the certificate issued by AdGuard.

Because of this, we undertake several additional measures to improve the connection’s security.

Financial websites and websites with sensitive personal data

Adguard Vpn

By default, AdGuard doesn’t filter any information for the bank websites, websites of the payment systems and websites with valuable personal data. We maintain a list of more than 1300 such exclusions.

If you believe some website should be added to this list, please let us know.

Extended Validation (EV) certificates

AdGuard provides an ability to exclude from filtering all websites that use extended validation certificates.

EV certificate means a higher security level and provides more guarantees than a regular certificate, proving that the website is not fraudulent or fake.

Problems related to HTTPS filtering

Adguard Vpn

The recent research shows that 5 to 10% of HTTPS connections are established by HTTPS filtering applications. It is usually done by various kinds of antivirus software. The bad news is that 24 of 26 tested antiviruses were in one way or another reducing the connection security level and two-thirds were creating vulnerable to hacking connections.

The researchers’ conclusion was simple - Internet security community has to pay close attention to applications that filter secure connections. And the developers of such programs have to attend to the quality of filtering implementation most seriously.

I want to note that AdGuard has not been tested by the researchers. According to our estimates, and judging by the set of tests, at the time of testing we would get the maximum score - A*. Nevertheless, that score is not perfect. There are some problems that have been identified by researchers but were not taken into account in the final evaluation.

Here in AdGuard, we completely agree with those conclusions. Moreover, we would like to be as open with users as possible and talk about the problems we are having at the moment, and what steps we are taking to improve the quality and security of filtering mechanism. The list of these problems is sorted by their priority.

Adguard For Windows

The majority of the problems discovered in the research above are connected with certificate validation mechanisms. This is what we want to focus on firstly. We are working on a separate certificate validation library. Moreover, we want to make it open source. A separate article lists all known drawbacks of HTTPS filtering in AdGuard and estimates when we will fix them.

HTTPS filtering issues on Android 7+

Starting from Android 7, developers have to explicitly indicate that their apps trust user-installed certificates. Not everyone wants to, or bothers with it. What does it mean for AdGuard? AdGuard installs a user certificate to be able to filter HTTPS traffic. If an app doesn't trust this certificate, its HTTPS traffic will not be filtered. What to do?

Adguard Extension

The first thing to mention is, some (many, even) modern apps still trust user certificates. Nothing changes in their regard. Almost all browsers do, too — maybe there are some exotic ones that don't, but they are a huge exception compared to the field.

Finally, if your device is rooted, you can move AdGuard certificate to system storage. This way you don't have to worry about any permissions a particular app may or may not have — HTTPS traffic will be filtered for modern apps just as well as for older ones. Please keep in mind that in this case some additional security restrictions like HPKP or Expect-CT apply to AdGuard.

Adguard Review

How to manually check HTTPS quality?

Adguard Chrome Extension

There are several websites created specifically for the purpose of checking HTTPS connections quality. These websites check if your browser (or, in our case, browser + AdGuard) is susceptible to common vulnerabilities. If you plan to use any program that filters HTTPS (not necessarily AdGuard, it may be an antivirus, etc.), we advise checking the connection quality on these websites.