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

Using the OpenVPN Connect app for Android


The OpenVPN Connect app is the official app from OpenVPN Technologies, Inc. I downloaded and installed the free app from Google Play on the same Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 tablet as in the previous example.

The OpenVPN Connect app can only be used with profiles that use [inline] certificate and key pairs. For this, we use the OpenVPN configuration profile created in the previous example by using the following steps:

  1. On the VPN server side, we launch OpenVPN using the standard ipv6-udp-server.conf configuration file.

  2. After download and installation, launch the app and import the profile:

  3. Next, select the right profile and click on Connect:

  4. After the OpenVPN connection has been established, the client will report OpenVPN: Connected.

    Note

    Note that the OpenVPN Connect client for Android also supports IPv6 addressing, as can be seen in the preceding screenshot.

  5. Verifying that the VPN client can be reached from the server and vice versa is left as an exercise...