Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a vulnerability that could have far-reaching consequences for VPNs and their users.

Leviathan Security's team revealed their findings a Blog post on its website and dubbed the exploit tunnel vision. They say this could allow attackers to bypass VPN protections and expose user traffic — essentially rendering the VPN useless.

VPNs are one of the most popular and widely used security tools on the market. They play an important role in securing users' traffic and data.

In recent years, VPN providers have become household names thanks to their promises of online privacy and anonymity. Oh Surveyed by NordVPN. It found that about 33 percent, or one in three, Americans regularly use a VPN.

With many users only in the US, this is a major cause for concern if the TunnelVision exploit is being used. And it's entirely possible since, according to the security team, it's been around since early 2002.

As explained in the blog post, if an attacker has administrative control over the local network that a potential victim is trying to connect to, he can manipulate the DHCP server that allocates IP addresses.

A setting known as option 121 then allows the DHCP server to override default routing rules that route VPN traffic through a local IP address, typically triggering an encrypted tunnel. do If this happens, an attacker can allow all or only some of the data traveling to the DHCP server to be routed through the unencrypted tunnel. This traffic will then be visible to the attacker.

In either case, the VPN application will continue to report that everything is normal and that all data is being sent over a secure connection.

The researchers admit that there is no clear solution to this problem. Only in theory could removing support for DHCP address this vulnerability, but he acknowledged that this is not a viable option “because it could break Internet connectivity in some legitimate cases.”

So far, the only operating system that is safe from this hack is the Android OS as it does not use option 121. For all other OS, there are no fixed fixes.

While ExpressVPN has already explained. That he is sure Network off The kill switch feature still protects users, leaving other VPN users to question how secure their VPN connection really is.

In the meantime, the best thing users can do is make sure they only connect to trusted networks and limit their use of that local coffee shop Wi-Fi unless No fix should be implemented.