Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN

Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by molecule on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @03:20PM (#6285561)

subscribing to a VPN provider is typically easier, cheaper and provides more options than rolling your own on EC2

http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/readerpicks/tp/The-Best-...

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by bensedat on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @03:24PM (#6285598)

Definitely true that cheaper is definitely possible, but a DigitalOcean droplet or an EC2 micro can be pretty cheap and you don't have to worry about the other VPN clients as much.

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by joelhaasnoot on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @03:25PM (#6285608)

It is hell though - recently setup this on a droplet, but getting all the settings right and diagnosed on Ubuntu and some Ubuntu and Android clients was complicated. It never seems to work the first time...

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by spindritf on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @03:32PM (#6285673)

L2TP/IPsec is hell. OpenVPN is not more difficult to set up than a web server. Of course, you need L2TP if you want to use the built-in clients on Android, IPhone, Windows...

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by bensedat on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @04:32PM (#6286091)

Yeah, mobile support was a bit tricky to set up for us as well, but we managed it with just OpenVPN. The OpenVPN app for iPhone at least was able to be configured without too much headache, although it only supports a subset of the OpenVPN options. It should be compatible with the config in the article.

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by joelhaasnoot on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @02:28AM (#6288319)

For Android, there's an OpenVPN app too - it uses the very handy and neat Android VPN API and besides needing certificates in the right format (not the text versions), it works well.

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by joelhaasnoot on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @01:36PM (#6291435)

True, that was my first try, and it failed miserably.

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by CedarMadness on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @04:01PM (#6285887)

Back in the 2.3 days, Android had OpenVPN support (or maybe it was just a CyanogenMod feature). I wish that would come back.

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by dschep on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @04:12PM (#6285957)

It was (and still is, IIRC) a CM feature.

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by chewable on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @06:07PM (#6286589)

I install something called OpenVPN-AS on a DigitalOcean droplet and it works like a charm...the first time out. Here are step-by-step instructions: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-insta....

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by krallin on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @03:30PM (#6285649)

Or you can just dynamically launch an EC2 instance just when you need a VPN : )

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by jessaustin on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @04:02PM (#6285894)

Can you do that securely without the VPN? b^)

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by fantnn on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @04:44PM (#6286153)

with something like puppet, yeah

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by michaelt on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @03:43PM (#6285754)

If you don't trust a public wifi hotspot with your cleartext traffic because of passive snooping, why would you trust a VPN provider with your cleartext traffic?

A lot of these torrent-anonymously consumer VPN services look pretty dodgy.

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by agwa on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @05:56PM (#6286553)

Use a non-dodgy VPN service, such as https://www.privatetunnel.com/ (run by the OpenVPN people) or https://privacy.cryptoseal.com/ (run by HN's rdl). You may be trusting them with your cleartext traffic, but that's really no different than trusting e.g. Comcast with your cleartext traffic when you're at home.

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Re:Don't Get Pwned on Public WiFi: Use Your Own VPN by alexchamberlain on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @03:36PM (#6285695)

How does it provide more options?

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