How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
31–40 of 117 posts
Re: How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
#32Alternatively, just use Algo. [1] It's a self-hosted, hardened IPSEC VPN that automates setup on multiple cloud providers. 1. https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
Or Streisand.[0] 0) https://github.com/jlund/streisand
Most people who have an opinion between the two suggest algo is the better of them, for what its worth.
Re: How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
#33The problem with a home-grown VPN is that you lose some of the plausible deniability that's gained from a shared VPN. If you have a VPN connected to a privately-owned AWS instance, the IP coming from that AWS instance is easily traced back to you. Whereas if your external IP is coming from a cluster that is shared by thousands of other people using that VPN, it is more difficult for someone to tie that specifically b…
Exactly. The author says because hosting companies are big they would never give information but this is a complete flaw. Google and Reddit are both known to hand information to law enforcement. Companies like digital ocean don't put as high as emphasis on customer privacy as companies likes PIA. On 90% of the service portals for servers I've purchased have had a message showing my IP was logged for safety reasons. S…
Put your consideration in Germany, privacy is pretty enforced here.
Re: How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
#34Alternatively, just use Algo. [1] It's a self-hosted, hardened IPSEC VPN that automates setup on multiple cloud providers. 1. https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
Algo is great!
For anybody who wants steps on setting it up with an unsupported provider, I wrote a blog post on exactly that recently: http://modulolotus.net/posts/2016-03-28-setting-up-algo/. I used Vultr, but it should help for any Ubuntu-based server.
Re: How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
#35The problem with a home-grown VPN is that you lose some of the plausible deniability that's gained from a shared VPN. If you have a VPN connected to a privately-owned AWS instance, the IP coming from that AWS instance is easily traced back to you. Whereas if your external IP is coming from a cluster that is shared by thousands of other people using that VPN, it is more difficult for someone to tie that specifically b…
>The problem with a home-grown VPN is that you lose some of the plausible deniability that's gained from a shared VPN. Yes, but what good is a VPN where you cannot trust your own network? I would have zero trust in any closed source private VPN. There are ways to gain anonymity from your host that wont require setting up a MITM attack vector for your traffic.
VPN is one layer. Filtering all port 80, only permitting TLS, and aggressively paring down your trusted root cert list can effectively mitigate the MITM threat.
Re: How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
#36This is odd. The primary point of VPN services (aside from a layer of protection on untrusted networks) is to mix your traffic in with N other random users such that the chance of you being identified as the source of the traffic is 1/N instead of 1/1. Hosting your own VPN exit node, with you as the sole user, defeats this use case entirely.
It's worth nothing that this may be your primary point, but that does not necessarily extend to the whole. Netflix has region-locked content that is often most easily accessed by leveraging VPNs. ISPs will have greater trouble selling off your meaningful browsing data if it's going through a VPN. And so on.
Re: How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
#37This is odd. The primary point of VPN services (aside from a layer of protection on untrusted networks) is to mix your traffic in with N other random users such that the chance of you being identified as the source of the traffic is 1/N instead of 1/1. Hosting your own VPN exit node, with you as the sole user, defeats this use case entirely.
The only use-case I have for a VPN at the moment is to go around the inevitable throttling that will happen when net neutrality goes away (in the US).
I have no reason to hide my browsing from the government. When I do (which I very much see as a possibility in the future), I will switch to something more anonymous.
Re: How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
#38What's the difference between L2TP/IPsec and OpenVPN?
Re: How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
#39The problem with a home-grown VPN is that you lose some of the plausible deniability that's gained from a shared VPN. If you have a VPN connected to a privately-owned AWS instance, the IP coming from that AWS instance is easily traced back to you. Whereas if your external IP is coming from a cluster that is shared by thousands of other people using that VPN, it is more difficult for someone to tie that specifically b…
> plausible deniability that's gained from a shared VPN Browser and device fingerprinting have become very powerful making VPNs not a very solid solution.
yep :'(
and the only solution seems to use Tor-browser with javascript disabled, which makes browsing the web a pain-in-the-ass.
Re: How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial options
#40The problem with a home-grown VPN is that you lose some of the plausible deniability that's gained from a shared VPN. If you have a VPN connected to a privately-owned AWS instance, the IP coming from that AWS instance is easily traced back to you. Whereas if your external IP is coming from a cluster that is shared by thousands of other people using that VPN, it is more difficult for someone to tie that specifically b…
Vultr (http://www.vultr.com/?ref=6979836) allows you to pay with bitcoin, making it more difficult to trace you