NordVPN gets sued by Torguard over alleged malpractices

Torguard has filed a complaint against rival VPN provider NordVPN in the Middle District of Florida on Friday 24th. The papers filed allege that NordVPN has been guilty of a number of extremely serious malpractices.

These allegations include a successful Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) on Black Friday, wrongfully obtaining and using TorGuard’s confidential and trade secret business information to blackmail the company and coercing a third party into silence.

The accusations hinge on the purported ownership of control that Panama-based NordVPN has over a Canadian web hosting company called c-Seven Media Inc.

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NordVPN issues explanation

We reached out to NordVPN to get their comments regarding the lawsuit. A spokesperson for NordVPN provided us with the following statement which is published verbatim below. 

“All accusations are entirely made up. TorGuard (although probably by mistake) even filed a lawsuit against some Canadian web design company which we never heard about. We received information that led us to finding TorGuard server configuration file available on the internet. We then noticed that one of their servers was left completely unprotected and publicly accessible for anyone. It contained private keys, scripts, and a number of other extremely sensitive information, which if misused, could have caused Torguard and their customers some serious harm. We disclosed the vulnerability to them with the best intentions. It is a normal practice and just the right thing to do, but they decided to file a lawsuit for blackmail. We didn't even want to make it public. We are very much looking forward to the following process. Also, now we have no choice but to take countermeasures.“

A blog on the NordVPN website goes into further details regarding Torguard’s accusations. Not surprisingly both parties provide entirely different sides of the story. The only thing that they do agree on is that there has been contact between the two companies but from there, their scenarios diverge.

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