PPTP was developed by Microsoft in the 1990s. For a decade, it was the default way to dial into corporate networks. But by 2012, security researchers had gutted it. PPTP relies on the MS-CHAPv2 authentication protocol, which can be cracked in less than 24 hours using a brute-force cloud attack.
For most of the 1990s and 2000s, Greenland relied on satellite relays. Latency was high (over 600ms), and bandwidth was a luxury. In a high-latency, low-bandwidth environment, PPTP’s lightweight overhead seemed attractive. It was fast because it offered virtually no security.
