- ExpressVPN has finally implemented support for Wireguard VPN protocol
- Resistance to Wireguard of ExpressVPN resulted in the development of its lightway protocol
- Post-Quantum Wireguard is added to Windows, iOS and Android ExpressVPN apps, with macOS to follow
After over five years of refusing to adopt the protocol, go so far as to develop its own alternative, ExpressVPN has finally embraced Wireguard and it made it quantumed.
In a step that will affect the entire VPN industry, what Techradar’s reviewers considered one of the best VPN providers in the market right now have a future-proof implementation of the protocol combining Wireguard with the next generation encryption algorithm ML-Kem.
That said, ExpressVPN intends to preserve its proprietary protocollightway-as already integrates ML-Kem-as its standard protocol. But in terms of post-quantum The future of online privacy, its adoption of Wireguard is extremely significant.
What is the Wireguard protocol?
Several different protocols – configurations of rules that manage a VPN connection – are currently in use. Many providers depend on Wireguard together with older solutions such as IKEV2/IPSEC, OpenVPN (which is regularly revised) and proprietary solutions such as Nordvpn’s Nordwhisper and Lightway.
All current protocols have different strengths and weaknesses as well as potential vulnerabilities that have not yet been uncovered. Wireguard, which ExpressVPN originally evaluated and rejected in 2019, is used by many virtual private networks (VPN) services and has been touted as a potential solution for the Internet of Things and Smart Home Device Encryption.
ML-Kem, meanwhile, is a quantum-resistant encryption standard issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) by the end of 2024 and very welcome by the Cryptography Society as the overall response to Post-Quantum encryption (PQE) needs.
By finally including Wireguard in his VPN client software and integrating ML Kem, ExpressVPN has offered a solution for the entire VPN industry. This means that any VPN provider, large or small that supplies it runs its own servers can introduce PQE protection.
As ExpressVPN has observed in a blog post: “Protection after quantity is virtually non-existent in production installations … We have solved these gaps and published the results. Now it is on the rest of the industry to catch up.”
From August 6, 2025, Wireguard after Quantum is available on Expressvpns iOS, Android and Windows Apps. Support for macOS will also follow soon.
Is quantum calculation really a risk of VPNs?
Quantum computers have long been recognized as pending a significant risk to the strictest current encryption standards. The underlying mathematics for encryption algorithms that can take millennia that can be solved by today’s machines can be broken relatively quickly by quantum computers.
This is clearly a risk of all types of current encryption, not least VPNs. When you create an encrypted route via the Internet via a VPN server using a VPN app, users expect their data to remain private and be safe against observing ISPs, governments and bad players.
Quantum Computing disturbs this completely.
So far back in 2020, ExpressVPN recognized in 2020 in his development of Lightway de Risks that quantum competence, despite its arrival being a decade. Understanding the maximum cyber criminals who “reap now, decrypter later”, they took steps to ensure that Lightway offered PQE security to users. So all data secured with PQE must be protected against decryption of quantum computers.
The White Paper, “Post-Quantum Wireguard: A practical implementation guide” by ExpressVPN engineers, Peter Membrey and Timo Beyel, says that although their Lightway Development solved post quantum protection, they were “concerned that Wireguard implementations were not given simple solutions that are suitable for VPN.”
ExpressVPN has not stopped showing the rest of the VPN industry what to do next time and introduce HTTPS -Proxy -support as an extra confidentiality. This is thanks to a new “strategic partnership” with BitTripple that integrates LT3 acceleration in Lightway, providing improved data transmission for slower Internet connections.
