Book Image

Mastering OpenVPN

By : Eric F Crist
Book Image

Mastering OpenVPN

By: Eric F Crist

Overview of this book

Security on the internet is increasingly vital to both businesses and individuals. Encrypting network traffic using Virtual Private Networks is one method to enhance security. The internet, corporate, and “free internet” networks grow more hostile every day. OpenVPN, the most widely used open source VPN package, allows you to create a secure network across these systems, keeping your private data secure. The main advantage of using OpenVPN is its portability, which allows it to be embedded into several systems. This book is an advanced guide that will help you build secure Virtual Private Networks using OpenVPN. You will begin your journey with an exploration of OpenVPN, while discussing its modes of operation, its clients, its secret keys, and their format types. You will explore PKI: its setting up and working, PAM authentication, and MTU troubleshooting. Next, client-server mode is discussed, the most commonly used deployment model, and you will learn about the two modes of operation using "tun" and "tap" devices. The book then progresses to more advanced concepts, such as deployment scenarios in tun devices which will include integration with back-end authentication, and securing your OpenVPN server using iptables, scripting, plugins, and using OpenVPN on mobile devices and networks. Finally, you will discover the strengths and weaknesses of the current OpenVPN implementation, understand the future directions of OpenVPN, and delve into the troubleshooting techniques for OpenVPN. By the end of the book, you will be able to build secure private networks across the internet and hostile networks with confidence.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Mastering OpenVPN
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

The complete setup


Based on the previous examples, we can now construct a complete production-level setup using configuration files, including routing, logging, IPv6 support, as well as a few other production features that OpenVPN offers.

Consider the following network layout:

For the server, we create the following configuration file movpn-02-02-server.conf:

dev tun
proto udp
local  openvpnserver.example.com
lport  1234
remote openvpnclient.example.com
rport  4321

secret secret.key 0
ifconfig 10.200.0.1 10.200.0.2
route 192.168.4.0 255.255.255.0

tun-ipv6
ifconfig-ipv6 2001:610:120::200:0:1 2001:610:120::200:0:2

user  nobody
groupnobody  # use 'group nogroup' on Debian/Ubuntu
persist-tun
persist-key
keepalive 10 60
ping-timer-rem

verb 3
daemon
log-append /var/log/openvpn.log

For the client, we create the file movpn-02-02-client.conf:

dev tun
proto udp
local  openvpnclient.example.com
lport  4321
remote openvpnserver.example.com
rport  1234

secret secret.key 1
ifconfig 10.200.0.2 10.200.0...