Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#1

Post by weston » Wed, May 11, 2011, 10:31 PM UTC

Preferably something free but a low cost option is fine. For browsing unsecured wireless networks in public places. Anything that will protect my traffic.

It's hard to tell just searching online what is legit info and what is marketing junk.

Re: Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#2

Post by tshtf » Wed, May 11, 2011, 10:48 PM UTC

Use the Amazon AWS Free Tier[1] and setup OpenVPN[2]. Clients for all major platforms are supported. If you need to protect iPhone or Android traffic, use PPTP or IPSec and you're set.

[1] http://aws.amazon.com/free/

[2] http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source.html

Re: Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#3

Post by weston » Wed, May 11, 2011, 11:00 PM UTC

tshtf wrote: post #2

Use the Amazon AWS Free Tier[1] and setup OpenVPN[2]. Clients for all major platforms are supported. If you need to protect iPhone or Android traffic, use PPTP or IPSec and you're set. [1] http://aws.amazon.com/free/ [2] http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source.html

Sweet! Thanks! I'll play around with it!

Re: Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#4

Post by randombs » Wed, May 11, 2011, 11:17 PM UTC

If you just want to browse securely, a VPN might be overkill. Just set up a free EC2 account or get a cheap VPS ( http://prgmr.com/ ) and SSH tunnel through that.

Re: Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#5

Post by indrora » Wed, May 11, 2011, 11:27 PM UTC

There's my old standby for anything sensative: SOCKS5 Proxy via SSH (just use -D:8080 on your cmdline and use FoxyProxy or whathaveyou)

if you're really overkill, you can always just use -X with SSH, fire up Firefox or Dillo or Chrome on your server and just tunnel X.

Just keep a reasonable quality machine (say, 1.4Ghz) running SSH and your favorite flavor of linux.

Re: Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#6

Post by paliopolis » Wed, May 11, 2011, 11:58 PM UTC

Thought that you might be interested in this old thread :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1966021

Re: Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#7

Post by noonespecial » Thu, May 12, 2011, 12:03 AM UTC

I've got my own servers so I just run openvpn on one of them and use tunnelblick on my mac to connect.

Re: Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#8

Post by weston » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:27 AM UTC

randombs wrote: post #4

If you just want to browse securely, a VPN might be overkill. Just set up a free EC2 account or get a cheap VPS ( http://prgmr.com/ ) and SSH tunnel through that.

Ok, I'll look into that, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#9

Post by zenmaster24 » Thu, May 12, 2011, 6:54 AM UTC

vpn doesnt work likes this - it is 2 sided, not one sided like a computer connecting to an unsecured wireless access point. unless the access point also supports the vpn, it wont work. what you want is some sort of anonymizer like tor

Re: Ask HN: What's The Best Secure VPN Client for Browsing Open Wi-Fi?

#10

Post by loevborg » Thu, May 12, 2011, 11:38 AM UTC

randombs wrote: post #4

If you just want to browse securely, a VPN might be overkill. Just set up a free EC2 account or get a cheap VPS ( http://prgmr.com/ ) and SSH tunnel through that.

Specifically, use https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle - dead easy and works in most circumstances, and not just for web browsing.