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Protect yourself from FireSheep with Amazon EC2 + OpenVPN for $0.50 a month

stratumsecurity.com

71–78 of 78 posts

Re: Protect yourself from FireSheep with Amazon EC2 + OpenVPN for $0.50 a month

#71
post #49
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

couldnt attackers then grab your EC2 dashboard cookie and possibly compromise your EC2 instance ? I mean if you need to login there first via an unsecure session, its not really that much safer

Your AWS dashboard would be compromised if you waited until you were on the open wireless network to run the EC2 instance, but attackers would not be able to compromise the EC2 instance. Once the instance has been created you can't change the Key Pair. You also can only download the private key associated with the Key Pair once, which is right when you create it. But of course, an attacker could stop or terminate you…

Not true: the dashboard runs entirely on SSL - which is still encrypted on an open wifi network. Compromising SSL isn't out of the question though, but highly unlikely.

Re: Protect yourself from FireSheep with Amazon EC2 + OpenVPN for $0.50 a month

#72
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the router to solve the dynamic IP issue. It updates to http://www.dyndns.com when my IP address changes.

That is a great option for people who have a dd-wrt/tomato/etc. compatible wireless device. The goal of the post was for folks who don't already have a solution setup and to get people familiar with EC2 now that it has a Free Tier and see some of the "not so obvious" things we can do with.

The goal of the post was to drive traffic to the blog, and then to the main consultancy site.

Otherwise, the goal of the post was to generate dicussion in places such as HN.

Also, you are referencing the parent comment in response to RDP protocol tunneling only, fyi.

...and your account was created an hour after the original comment.

Just seems strange to create an account and then tell us the goal of the article.

Re: Protect yourself from FireSheep with Amazon EC2 + OpenVPN for $0.50 a month

#73
post #62
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, there are so many VPN providers that EC2 looks like overkill for this.

Care to list some decent ones? I'd be interested, but haven't looked for them much.

I have used www.tektonic.net since 2004 and have been pleased with their service.

Re: Protect yourself from FireSheep with Amazon EC2 + OpenVPN for $0.50 a month

#74
post #60

28 steps, and he didn't think to create a new AMI to share with the world.

With default Ubuntu configuration you just have to enable/install OpenVPN server (1) (server), generate one user certificate (2) (server) and configure NetworkManager profile (3) (client).

All the other steps are just intro to using Linux and/or Amazon EC2 infrastructure or such technicalities as copying files or (unnecessary) configuring time zone.

Re: Protect yourself from FireSheep with Amazon EC2 + OpenVPN for $0.50 a month

#75
post #46
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need an EBS to run an instance on EC2. You can just run the instance as normal. It has a root filesystem, you can write to it etc. However if you stop the instance, then all your changes are lost. The EBS is only needed if you actually need disk space.

Micros (which are what you get on the free tier) are only available as EBS-backed instances.

It's worth noting that 20GB EBS space is provided with free tier. Though all default Ubuntu AMIs use 25GB EBS by default AFAIK.

Re: Protect yourself from FireSheep with Amazon EC2 + OpenVPN for $0.50 a month

#76
post #73
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to list some decent ones? I'd be interested, but haven't looked for them much.

I have used www.tektonic.net since 2004 and have been pleased with their service.

That appears to be a VPS provider, not a VPN. And it costs more than 0.02$/hour on demand.

Re: Protect yourself from FireSheep with Amazon EC2 + OpenVPN for $0.50 a month

#77
post #76
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used www.tektonic.net since 2004 and have been pleased with their service.

That appears to be a VP S provider, not a VP N . And it costs more than 0.02$/hour on demand.

Sorry, misunderstood the question.
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