- Mullvad VPN has rolled out an upgrade to its feature that protects against AI tracking
- The second version of Defense Against AI-guided Traffic (DAITA) is now available for all VPN apps
- Mullvad released DAITA in May 2024 as “the first step” in the battle against sophisticated traffic analysis
Mullvad VPN has just unveiled a considerable upgrade to its protections against AI surveillance.
The second version of its Defense Against AI-guided Traffic (DIATA) is now available for all VPN apps, bringing two major improvements that “make it harder for attackers targeting DAITA.”
One of the best VPN providers for privacy-conscious users, Mullvad released DAITA in May 2024 as “the first step” in the battle against sophisticated traffic analysis powered by new generative AI software.
DAITA 2.0
Built entirely on an open-source framework, DAITA modifies the appearance of data packets sent over the VPN network to prevent snoopers from tracing activity back to you.
It does so by making all data packets the same size, adding random background traffic, and distorting patterns.
According to Jan Jonsson, CEO of Mullvad VPN, this capability is critical, as AI can be used to analyze traffic patterns. In simpler terms, this means your activities may be linked to you without the need to break the encryption offered by the virtual private network (VPN).
“AI will be used both to collect data about people and to analyze that data. That’s why we developed DAITA, to counteract this right at the point of the data collection,” Jonsson told me back in October.
On March 28, 2025, however, Mullvad released the second version of DAITA across all its platforms to reduce attacks against the feature itself.
DAITA version 2 now available on all platforms: https://t.co/B77nm95UHkMarch 28, 2025
As per Mullvad’s own words, “DAITA version 2 brings two major improvements: a large reduction in overhead traffic and dynamic configurations that vary VPN tunnel characteristics between connections.”
The first improvement refines one of the covert practices DAITA employs to confuse AI tracking – the addition of dummy packets to distort network patterns.
DAITA 2.0 now inserts half the amount of these packets but promises to deliver the same level of defense. “As a customer using DAITA, the immediate benefit is improved speed,” says the provider.
In the new version, two VPN clients visiting the same webpage will now produce different in-tunnel data streams, too, to make it harder for attackers to circumvent DAITA protections. A new configuration is also selected every time a device recreates its VPN connection.
If you want more technical details on how DAITA works, I suggest reading this post by Karlstad University’s cybersecurity researchers on the matter.
Mullvad’s commitment to protecting your data against AI surveillance doesn’t stop there, either. The team is already working on a new version of DAITA.
“DAITA version 3 is already on the roadmap and will introduce a new type of defense alongside the existing ones. Watch this space for more updates as we advance the state of accessible and performant network traffic defense.”
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chiara.castro@futurenet.com (Chiara Castro)
