Ok @Null-Byte, everything has been GREAT here so far! I love this place, it is my new home is the interw3bz. But all of the sec-talk has got me thinking I should set up my own personal VPN. I would really appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction on this.
My plan:
Set up 1 laptop at home running Linux (Which distro is great for VPN?).
Use second laptop for tunneling back to nix box at home in order to have secure browsing.
Questions:
What's a good distro to set up if only being used for VPN?
What's a good vpn client to use?
How secure are we talking (IRC, surfing, etc safe?), or just slightly more secure than my home router?
Also, what setting up SSH and logging into my machine? Is this going to act as an extra layer, or just pointless?
My goal here is to browse the web (safer) and feel as though I have the freedom to research content without always feeling like there's someone standing over my shoulder lol. I'm not really trying to hide from big brother as I figure they already have access to all the crypto including tor. And I'm not doing anything nefarious, so I'm not (too) worried about them.
Thanks guys (&gals). Love the content!! Keep up all the great work, and thanx in advance!
5 Responses
Ah, realistically, any linux distro will work pretty easily with Openvpn(for the most part.) Also, Openvpn takes practically no system resources, so you should be set to use the laptop at home for more than just a vpn server if you want. :) If you were wanting to make the laptop at home go full blown server though, I would go with Ubuntu Server edition. Then, just follow this guide here..
Openvpn AS
Using this particular openvpn package, you will not only have a vpn server to connect to, but web connect clients that will allow you to quickly run a vpn client from just about any computer, so long as you have admin right to it. There is a limited number of licences you get to use, but for personal use, this is a very quick and effective vpn server that automatically configures a web server and everything...
If you were looking for something more gritty and something that will teach you more about VPN's in general though, you can always just download the base OpenVPN server package and configure the client.ovpn and server.conf files. It's not that hard, just remember to make sure that your setting are practically the same on both ends for almost all the settings. (This is true with almost every vpn connection.)
As far as using SSH, it would ad another layer of Security, but it would be a bit over the top. Realistically, if you are just talking about doing things and feeling a bit concerned someone might be spying, then you would probably be fine doing a vpn OR an ssh tunnel. Ssh tunnels can be very effective and easy to set up as well. You can also use SSH to make a sock proxy that doesn't require admin rights on the machine you wish to tunnel from. You just configure your web browser to use the socks proxy and you are set. All this requires is a few quick config file changes as ssh by default isn't set up to allow you to create tunnels.
Awesome! Thank you so much for your feedback. I've just installed hma vpn and I set it to change every few minutes. My reason for this is because while I was surfing the other night, I had a browser error that looked strikingly similar to a buffer overflow! So I figure, at least with the vpn, it will change my address every few minutes, hopefully thwarting off most amateur hax0rz, and keep them from gaining a shell. I'm sure there are people out there good enough to bypass this with little effort, but I figure it will keep most of the kiddies out.
So I think I may just try to start by setting up an SSH back home, then from there, use the hma vpn to randomly change servers every few minutes.
Thanks!
No problem. :) Good luck with stuff and enjoy the hacking/digging/etc.. ^//^
If you are doing stuff that may result in LE checking into your actions then HMA are not a good choice. Rather infamously they were the VPN of choice of a Lulzsec member but will happily provide logs if they receive a court order requiring them to do so. What you really want is a VPN provider that maintains no logs; I haven't the time to go into details but this is a good place to start https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-take-your-anonymity-seriously-2014-edition-140315/
the previous author took a link with good review, but as for me I like vpntunnel.com. I've never heard they leaked the information, their service has good speed and adequate price. When I get in their website for the first time I was pleasantly surprised that there was money back guarantee if the client is unsatisfied with the service. That's why I decided to try. It can work on Windows, MAC, Ios, Android and Linux using different protocols. So having account there I use vpn connection on all my devices simultaneously.
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