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

Chapter 8. Using OpenVPN on Mobile Devices and Home Routers

Nowadays, OpenVPN is available not only on traditional PC-style platforms, but also on smart phones and tablets running Android or Apple iOS, as well as embedded hardware and home routers. For Android, there are two apps: OpenVPN for Android, which is fully open source, and OpenVPN Connect for Android, which is the official app from OpenVPN Technologies, Inc. We will cover both these Android apps, as there are some subtle differences in using them.

In this chapter, we will first explore how to use OpenVPN on Android and iOS, and how to best integrate smart phone use into an existing OpenVPN setup.

Next, we will explore how OpenVPN can be used on small hardware, such as home routers running the popular DD-WRT Linux-based firmware. We will show how to use a home router as both an OpenVPN client and an OpenVPN server.

An important note is that both Android and iOS only support tun mode. This is a limitation of the operating system, not...