A PROTOCOL WITH A PURPOSE
This is not a story about a magic button. It is an engineering response to a real problem: WireGuard was fast, yet its packets were easy to identify. The Amnezia team kept its cryptographic core and began changing what the network can see.
The idea for AmneziaVPN was born at the first Demhack hackathon and continued to grow with Privacy Accelerator.
Amnezia is an open project and ecosystem, not closed technology owned by one VPN service. Client and server code are available to the community.
AmneziaWG is built on WireGuard-Go: it retains the speed and compact architecture while changing identifiable network traits.
THE USEFUL VERSION
WireGuard has fixed packet types and predictable control-packet sizes. That is harmless on an ordinary network. Under DPI, it becomes a ready-made signature that can identify a connection before anyone analyzes its contents.
The original Amnezia idea was practical: enter your VPS credentials and let the app deploy the VPN automatically. This created a self-hosted model in which infrastructure and keys remain under the user’s control.
AmneziaWG became a fork of WireGuard-Go. The WireGuard cryptographic layer was not replaced; the work focused on the transport layer — the headers, sizes and service packets visible to DPI.
Version 1.5 extended obfuscation with I1–I5 signature packets that can imitate the opening of ordinary UDP protocols such as QUIC or DNS. The goal is not a new cipher, but a less predictable appearance on the wire.
H1–H4 moved from single fixed values to ranges. S1–S4 add randomized prefixes to different message types, while signature and junk-packet chains blur the handshake profile. A universal DPI pattern becomes much harder to write.
After widespread blocking in Russia in the summer of 2026, the team documented AmneziaWG 3.0. Development moved beyond individual headers: packet sizes, sequences, timing intervals and some protocol metadata vary, making sessions less alike.
WHAT STAYS INSIDE
This distinction matters. AmneziaWG does not claim secret cryptography: it keeps WireGuard’s established model and makes the tunnel harder to classify by external traits. That is why it can remain fast and practical on phones and routers.
WireGuard packet types no longer have one permanent outer value.
Random prefixes change the characteristic lengths of control and transport messages.
Custom packets can appear before a handshake and resemble ordinary UDP traffic.
A randomized packet train blurs the timing and shape of session startup.
We deliberately separate AlphaVPN as a service from Amnezia as an open technology project. These are the team’s official story, technical documentation and protocol source code.
