Hey all, a VPN hides my IP from the Internet, but does it also hide it from an .exe application I download on my computer ?
Since (I guess) the .exe software has more rights/access on my PC than a random website.
Thanks 
Nope, a VPN does not protect you from malware after you download and execute it.
Hi, no. My personal PC, but I was wondering if any software could get my IP by sort of « bypassing » a VPN since it’s installed on my machine
Not specifically talking about malwares, just any software in general. For example let’s say I use a crypto wallet web version vs desktop version, I know my IP is hidden to the web version, but is it also hidden to the desktop version which is installed on my machine ?
The computer doesn’t have a public IP address, the router has. But every code ran on the computer with certain permissions can find out the public address you are communicating through, as long as permitted access to the network stack and can send and receive packets. The software uses the given connection and can therefore always see its own exit, if it’s VPN or not. When connected over Tor or to a VPN, the ISP just knows that you are cummunicating with Tor or VPN. Tor guards or VPN servers see the router’s public address, and the software knows the Tor exit node or VPN address.
This question feels complicated to me, but I’ll try my best.
Maybe, to some extent, the VPN does hide your public IP address, even from programs running on your PC. A program on your PC would have to connect to a public website and ask it for your IP address, for example https://ifconfig.me, to get your public IP address. If the request goes through your VPN, you will, of course, get the VPN’s IP address.
However, the program on your PC might have access to your local IP address, MAC address, things like that.
If the program were malicious, it could try to use exploits to break through the VPN and obtain your ISP’s public IP address, whereas a website would be restricted to using Javascript or WebRTC exploits.
Your desktop crypto wallet will either connect to other full node peers to download the blockchain, or if it’s a light wallet, it will connect to remote nodes to get info about your transactions. The VPN will hide your IP address from those servers.
Not without the cooperation of an external site.
That’s what I meant with ‘it can find out’. Cooperation with external site and a shell = certain permissions. Just p80 | p443 needed.
wget https://ifconfig.me/ip | tr -d '\t'
Or with PS (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://ifconfig.me/ip").Content.Trim()
That’s all. 