When new Rust applications come out I pay attention because the language attempts to make code more secure. Obscurais a new VPN open sourced on GitHub. It claims to not be able to log my activity and it is supposed to disguise traffic from network filters. It is actually reusing Mullvad VPN exit nodes. As I’m going behind the great firewall I’ve bought a month to test it.
Tip of had to Larry Salibra for bringing Obscura on my radar.
I wanted to watch the “LA FireAid Concert” from Singapore, however, seems the concert was restricted internationally. I use the Mullvad VPN and realized they didn’t have an Apple TV version of their app.
Fortunately, I also had been playing with a private network app called Tailscale.
My first attempt was to use my Mac as an exit node of Tailscale while connected to the Mullvad VPN. This routed my Apple TV traffic through my Mac and then through Mullvad. Once I realized I had to approve the exit node in the Tailscale interface, it was a success!
For the first five minutes it was great, and then it started buffering and stopping. I was so close and tried to find out why Mullvad didn’t have an Apple TV app. According to their website, it is on the roadmap, but meanwhile, Tailscale actually has a Mullvad integration. For an extra $5 bucks a month, you can use Mullvad as an exit node. So you can set up the Tailscale app on Apple TV to connect to Mullvad. Once I paid for this add-on, I was able to get my Apple TV to direct its traffic to Mullvad and the buffering and skipping stopped.
