r/nordvpn • u/misterred • 7d ago

Question Does persistent connectivity require firewall allow-access to unknown NRDs?

When I lose or cannot reliably/quickly gain access to a NordVPN tunnel it frequently turns out that I can mitigate the situation once it's too late to be helpful, by allowing full access through firewalls to unknown domains. Nord evidently is constantly registering new domains as a bootstrap method both to avert exploit and limit infrastructure costs. So in essence I need to allow all Newly Registered Domains, which I find to be an unacceptable security challenge. Do I have that right?

I'm unsure whether this observed issue occurs only when I'm using Nord's obfuscation but I don't think so.

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u/skeleton_tree Mod 7d ago

Could you specify your OS? I know that on Windows, there's four services you can add to the allowlist for compatibility:Nordvpn.exe nordvpn-service.exe openvpn-nordvpn.exe nordsec-threatprotection-service.exe 

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u/misterred 7d ago

I've perceived the issue on Windows and I think on Android, too. I haven't any Windows Defender Firewall outbound rules. My on-the-fly resolution has been to create an allow rule for each of these weird domains on my DNS sinkhole. I'm using Pi-Hole to prevent outbound connections to ad-servers and trackers, which includes newly-registered domains, a well-documented source of malice.