How To: Create a Free SSH Account on Shellmix to Use as a Webhost & More

Having an SSH or Secure SHell to tunnel your traffic through is something we have talked about many times at Null Byte. As we know, it allows us to securely route and encrypt our traffic through a remote server, effectively anonymizing us and protecting our traffic from all forms of analysis—simultaneously. We have gone over how to make a home SSH tunnel. However, the question has come up, "How can I get an SSH tunnel to somewhere other than my computer?" This would be useful in a situation where anonymity at home is a must, or in the event you need to hide web traffic from your geeky brother or something.

Shellmix offers a free shell account service to anyone who SSHs in. Though having anonymity from home is good, there is actually a lot of cool stuff that we can do with our secure shell that you might not have thought of.

SSH Kung-Fu

• Free web hosting.
• Free file backup.
• Free virtual host to obfuscate your IP address.
• You can run remote programs, such as a bot for an IRC channel without downtime.

As you see, there is very little reason to not want to have an SSH tunnel, even if you are a Windows user, you should learn Linux terminal commands to make the most of your shell.

Requirements

• An SSH client. Windows users can use PuTTY.
• If not using PuTTY, Mac or Linux is required.

SSH into Shellmix

Text in bold is a terminal command.

First, we need to open up our terminal emulator and SSH into the account designated for users without an existing shell.

1. SSH into Shellmix.
       ssh -p 30 newuser@shellmix.com
   
2. Enter the password for newuser, which is newuser.
3. Enter your choice for a login name.
4. Enter desired password (use a strong one).
5. Enter your email address (must be valid).
6. Pick the nano text editor.
       nano
   
7. Enable english as your preferred language.
       US
8. Pick a shell vHost.
       shell
   -OR-
       fgfg
9. Pick which hard drive you would like your account to be stored on.
       hdd1
10. Confirm with Enter.

Accessing Your SSH Account

1. Let's log in to our newly created shell account to test it out.
       ssh <yourusername>@shellmix.com

You should have seen your terminal change roots on you, from your computer, to the remote host. Now, let's check out how we could use some of the other cool features of our SSH tunnel.

• Push files to our shell to back them up or share them.
      cat [example-file] | ssh lycan@dserv.darchoods.net cat ">" [example-file]
• Pull files from the shell for retrieval.   
      ssh <username>@shellmix.com cat "<" [remotefile] >[localfile]
• Send traffic over a defined port through your shell to encrypt and anonymize traffic. To utilize this, after entering the command, go into your application settings and change your network options to connect to 127.0.0.1 on port 9070.
      ssh -ND 9070 <username>@shellmix.com
• Run an IRC client that can't be disconnected (great for logging).
      screen irssi
• Run a webserver. In order to access the webpages, they need to be stored in your www folder. In order to view the webpage, you need to visit this URL: <username>.shellmix.com.
      sudo service apache start

Isn't SSH awesome? Make sure to try to donate to Shellmix if you can, they offer us a great service!

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