Bastion 8
$ 59 /month
- vCPU
- 4 × dedicated
- RAM
- 8 GB
- Storage
- 160 GB NVMe SSD + LUKS2
- Transfer
- 15 TB
- IPv4 / IPv6
- 3 / /64 routed
Solution
VPS for journalism, research and source-protection infrastructure
Bastion 8 · $59/moBastion 16 · $109/mo
Short answer
Source-protection infrastructure is a legal architecture problem before it is a technical one. What matters is that the provider holds no identity information, keeps no connection records, sits outside mutual legal assistance reach, and encrypts disks with a key it does not have. The Bastion line in Seychelles, Panama, Iceland or Switzerland is built exactly for this.
What you need
| Resource | What you actually need |
|---|---|
| Jurisdiction | Outside the Eyes alliances and outside easy MLAT reach |
| Disk | LUKS2 full-disk encryption, unlocked at boot by you over SSH |
| Account | No identity data held; email alias plus crypto payment |
| Logging | No connection logs, no netflow, no access records retained |
Recommended plans
Bastion 16
$ 109 /month
- vCPU
- 8 × dedicated
- RAM
- 16 GB
- Storage
- 320 GB NVMe SSD + LUKS2
- Transfer
- 25 TB
- IPv4 / IPv6
- 3 / /64 routed
Bastion 32
$ 199 /month
- vCPU
- 12 × dedicated
- RAM
- 32 GB
- Storage
- 640 GB NVMe SSD + LUKS2
- Transfer
- 40 TB
- IPv4 / IPv6
- 3 / /64 routed
Recommended locations
Location is usually the decision that matters most for this workload — either because latency dominates, or because jurisdiction does.
Why OnionVPS for this
- We cannot disclose identity data we never collected — that is an architectural property, not a promise.
- Bastion instances encrypt at rest with a key you hold; a seized disk is ciphertext.
- A warrant canary, updated on a published schedule, with the signing key on the same page.
- Seychelles incorporation with no public beneficial-ownership register and limited MLAT exposure.
How to set it up
-
Order a Bastion instance from a network you do not normally use
Tor or a VPN, with an email alias created for the purpose.
-
Pay in Monero
Protocol-level privacy; there is no public ledger entry to correlate.
-
Set the LUKS passphrase at first boot
Unlock over dropbear SSH after each reboot. We never see the key.
-
Deploy SecureDrop or a hardened onion service
Tor-only, no clearnet listener at all.
-
Rehearse the failure cases
Practise the wipe and the restore before you need either.
Frequently asked questions
Can hosting genuinely protect a source?
Hosting is one layer. It removes the provider as a point of compulsion and puts the server outside easy legal reach, but it cannot fix operational security mistakes elsewhere. Treat it as necessary, not sufficient.
What happens if you receive a subpoena?
We assess whether it is valid legal process from a court with jurisdiction over us. If it is, we comply with exactly what is ordered — which is very little, because we hold an email address and a payment reference. If it is not, we reject it. Either way, the warrant canary reflects reality.
Is full-disk encryption really useful on a VPS?
Against physical seizure of a powered-off disk, yes, decisively. Against an attacker with access to the running hypervisor, no — and no provider can honestly claim otherwise. We say so plainly because the distinction matters.