MakeUseOf » VPN

How To Combat WiFi Security Risks When Connecting To A Public Network

Matt Smith — Tue, 24 May 2011 15:31:38 +0000

As many people now know, connecting to a public, unsecured wireless network can have serious risks. It’s known that doing this can provide an opening for all manner of data theft, particularly passwords and private information.

The specifics of why an unsecure connection can be a problem is more obscure, however – as are the methods that can be used to beef up your security even when using an unsecured public hotspot. Let’s have a look at the exact WiFi security risks of public networks, and the solutions available to counter those risks.

Ah! My Airwaves!

The problem of unsecured wireless networks is a part of the way radios work. Unless specifically designed to do so, a radio won’t broadcast in any particular direction. It will send information across the airwaves in all directions.

As a result, anyone nearby can potentially pick up the data sent by a wireless radio, and if that data is unsecured, it can be read. WiFi security works by encrypting the data sent. It can still be picked up, but can’t be easily read because of the algorithm used to scramble it.

Most people understand this broad summary of the issue, but it’s actually a bit misleading, because it seems to imply that someone can simply open a notepad, connect to a public network, and watch passwords drop in. In truth, obtaining data even over a public WiFi network requires a certain level of knowledge about software such as WiFi scanners, and your average person simply doesn’t possess the necessary skills. Yes, there are tools like the FireSheep extension for Firefox that can hijack sessions easily in theory, but in practice some technical knowledge is usually required to do anything truly malicious.

HTTPS Security Is Your Friend

Attempts to read data can sometimes be thwarted by the first line of defense on a public WiFi network – site or service encryption. For example, when you type in and send your password across a network, it does not need to be, and ideally should not be, sent as “plain text”. It should instead be encrypted via HTTPS or SSL. The same goes for all potentially sensitive information.

Many sites will automatically switch to HTTPS when you visit a page that requires the exchange of potentially sensitive information. Some sites, like Google, Twitter and Facebook, give you the option to remain in HTTPS at all times. You can decrease your risk when using any public network by making sure that any site on which you are entering potentially sensitive information is secured. Usually this is as simple as watching for the “https” prefix on the URL. If you’re on a public network, and the site is not secured, then just wait until you’re home before entering any important information.

Use a VPN

Although HTTPS can be great, it does depend on the website’s implementation, which is something you have no control over. A poorly designed HTTPS site could have huge security holes – and it’s never wise to assume that a site has great security just because it’s popular.

A VPN is a great way to make public WiFi secure for your use 100% of the time. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, and it’s a method of creating a secured connection even on a network that is public and unsecured. Instead of connecting directly to the Internet, you connect to a specific server, which is itself connected to the Internet. The connection between your device and the server is encrypted, so the information you send is protected even on unsecured WiFi.

There are quite a few different ways to set up a VPN, but the easiest is to use a free VPN service. Free use of a VPN is usually limited to a certain amount of traffic per day or month, after which you’ll have to pay for more bandwidth. The speed of your connection might also be handicapped unless you pay up.

Tunnel For Safety

Another common method of creating a secure connection even on public WiFi is to use tunneling. Leave your shovel in the shed – this method is a server capable of SSH protocol.

Tunneling is the process of placing a packet sent via a specific network protocol inside another packet using a different network protocol. In the case of SSH tunneling, all packets are placed inside SSH packets, which are encrypted. The packets are then sent to the designated SSH server.

This method can also be used to work around attempts to block access to specific websites, which can be handy if you’re on a WiFi hotspot that’s trying to prevent you from accessing certain content without paying up. You can tunnel either by using a virtual server or by using your own server, which presumably would be left at home.

Conclusion

The best way to make sure your information isn’t obtained when using a public WiFi network is to not send any sensitive information over the network. This is not always practical, however, so the methods above can help provide extra security.

Of the three, relying on HTTPS is by far the worst, because only specific information will be encrypted and that information is designated by the site, rather than the user. Still, it’s better than nothing.

Let us know in the comments if you have any other good WiFi security tips for protecting yourself while on a public WiFi network.

Image Credits: proXPN, vwbike.com

How To Use Your Dedicated Virtual Server As An Internet Proxy Using SSH Tunneling

James Bruce — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:31:25 +0000

I explained some of the benefits of having your own virtual private server hosting account a while ago – not only are they faster and able to host many more of your sites, you can also configure W3 Total Cache for optimum performance by installing special Apache caching extensions. Today I’m going to show you how you can also use it as a private Internet proxy server for secure Internet browsing.

This is particularly beneficial in countries such as China, where most commercial proxy solutions have stopped working altogether. Read on for a full explanation of how you can go about using your own VPS hosting account as a private proxy.

First up, a few points to clear up:

Can I Use This Method With My Shared Hosting, Or Does It Need To Be A VPS Or Dedicated Server?

This method uses SSH (secure shell, or “command line” access), so generally that means you can only use it with your dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting account. Some shared hosts do allow SSH access, so search your shared host’s support documents first.

Can I Use This To Download Torrents Or Other Nefarious Illegal Activites?

No. Remember the traffic is being routed through your website / server IP address, so anything you do can be traced back to that. You will also be using part of the bandwidth allocation of your hosting account, so downloading torrents would quickly push up the monthly hosting cost.

So Why Would I Want To Do This?

Sometimes you just want another IP address when you visit a website. This can be especially useful when faced with location-specific sites that block other countries. In other cases, your country may already be blocking access to various well known proxy providers, as is the case in China. The method described here will allow you to tunnel out of the offending country and go about your daily business without having every packet you send being inspected by the great firewall.

Setting Up SSH On Windows

I’ll start with Windows as the process is a little more complicated than on Mac OsX or Linux. In order to use SSH, you’ll need to download a special client software – in this tutorial I’ll use Putty. Go ahead and download the basic putty.exe file.

When you first open Putty, there’s a few settings to fill in. First is your server domain. If you have lots of domains set up on your private hosting account then go ahead and use any of them, but they’ll need to be SSH-enabled and remember that your login/password will be unique to each domain. I don’t suggest using the root account to log in under any circumstances, even if you have enabled it.

Enter the server domain on the first screen.

Click on the SSH label on the left sidebar. Make sure compression is enabled.

Expand the SSH label to reveal additional settings. On the Tunnels screen, enter 9090 as the Source Port and change the destination to Dynamic.

Head back up to the sessions screen where you first entered the domain. Enter a name for your settings in the text box below saved sessions, then hit save. You can now click on this saved session in future to reload all your settings.
Finally, hit Open. There is no way to save your password and username, so you’ll need to re-enter these each time you open a connection. I also had problems pasting my password in, so if you do too then try typing it one character at a time. The first time you open the connection, you may get a warning error about authenticity of certificates and such. If so, ignore it and continue.

That’s it for Windows, leave the putty connection open and move onto configuring your browser.

Setting Up SSH On Linux / OsX

Open up a terminal, and type the following command,

ssh -C2qTnN -D 9090 username@yourdomain.com

After you’ve typed in your password, that’s it. Leave the terminal open while you go on to configure your browser.

Configuring The Browser

I’ll explain a couple of browsers here but basically you just need to change the settings for Connection -> Proxy to be a SOCKS5 proxy, with the url localhost and port 9090.

On Internet Explorer

Click the Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections tab. Tick Use a Proxy server and click Advanced. Fill in ONLY the SOCKS proxy as address localhost and port 9090

On Firefox

Open up Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> Settings -> Proxies. Select Manual proxy configuration. Fill out SOCKS Host and port.

Alternatively, if you’re running a decent operating system like OsX, you can change the settings for system wide network access which will affect all browsers apps (this will also be opened for you if you attempt to change Chrome OsX proxy settings). From System Preferences, select your appropriate network interface (in my case, Ethernet). Under the proxies tab, tick to enable SOCKS proxy, then type in the details on the right.

That’s wasn’t too hard was it? Of course, you could set this up with any remote linux computer really, but I wanted to demonstrate another of the many benefits to having your own private host over slow shared hosting, and just how powerful a few simple linux commands can be.

Remember, don’t do anything illegal with this method, as it can be traced back to your hosting account and is not designed to provide 100% anonymity.

Image Credit: ShutterStock

What A VPN Tunnel Is & How To Set One Up

Dave Drager — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:31:37 +0000

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a method of linking two locations like they are on a local private network. There are several reasons why you might want to set one up. Usually there is an aspect of convenience and you might also want to add security to your connection.

Let’s go over several reasons why you might want to set up a VPN tunnel and then look at the differences between running a tunnel versus running a complete VPN service on your machine.

What Is A VPN Tunnel?

A “tunnel” is simply a link between two locations through some other material. A good analogy is a tunnel that goes under a mountain. Both sides of the mountain are linked up through a direct path; in this case the “mountain” is the Internet. So essentially a tunnel is a direct shortcut through the Internet.

Although by definition a tunnel is not encrypted, typically the reason that you are creating one is that you want to add some encryption to it. Let’s say you have a branch office in one location using a regular Internet connection and then you want to connect to a server somewhere at your main office location. Since the data you are transferring between offices is likely sensitive, you wouldn’t want someone to be able to view that data while travelling over the Internet. That is where a VPN tunnel comes into play.

Why You Might Want To Set Up A VPN Tunnel

There are many reasons you might want to set this up. The first reason many people use this for is to encrypt a TCP/IP connection from an application to a server. Some applications, mainly ones based on a client/server protocol, need to connect to a database server to access their data. Using a tunnel is an excellent way to not only make the connection easier for the end user but also to secure the communications.

The second reason is that you want to encrypt all of your traffic leaving some location. A tunnel can be set up, by using a regular or transparent proxy, to transfer all of your Internet data via that tunnel.

How To Set Up A VPN Tunnel

Jorge wrote up an excellent tutorial on how to tunnel web traffic with SSH Secure Shell. That tutorial is for forwarding all traffic in a web browser, but we are only using a local port forward to create a simple “tunnel” between machines. For this example, let’s say we want to forward local port 5555 to remote port 80, to securely access a web application on a remote machine. This tutorial also assumes we have a working SSH connection on the machine to encrypt the traffic.

First download Putty and run the executable. Fill in the hostname (IP) and other access information for SSH access.
Now enter the Connection->SSH->Tunnels menu. Here is where we configure the SSH tunnels. Enter your port information, for the above example the number and settings are shown below.

Once you connect, Putty will open a screen connecting to the remote location. You could also set it up so that it does not launch a shell – it will then just show a blank screen, but the tunnel will still be open.

Your tunnel is now ready for use. Open a web browser, or point whatever application you are configuring to localhost, and the port to whatever you set to forward. In this example it is port 5555 and forward it to the web server.

Even though you are not running a web server locally, you will see that you are connecting to the remote server just like it is running on your local machine. That is why it is called a tunnel – it is a direct connection to a remote place through a mountain of the Internet.

If you are interested in a more feature robust VPN tunnel, check out the excellent VPN resources we have here on MakeUseOf. They vary from free Internet surfing VPNs to more featureful VPN software for businesses.

Do you have any other unique reasons for setting up a VPN tunnel between two machines? Please share your ideas below, and as always let us know if you have any questions about setting this up!

Image credit: Geograph

Secure Your Internet Activity with ibVPN [Giveaway]

James Bruce — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:30:11 +0000

In the last year or so, I think we’ve all come to realise that our internet communications are really quite insecure. Using a public WiFi connection? FireSheep will easily grab your social network network passwords in seconds, giving anyone on the same network instant access to your entire life.

There are a lot of things that can happen to you too if you don’t secure yourself online. You have a reason to be scared, and there’s no point in lying to you about it. But this week, we’re giving 25 six-month subscriptions to ibVPN to totally secure your internet activity.

What a VPN does for you

Put simply, VPN creates a secure tunnel between your computer and remote location. Anything you communicate will be encrypted and secured between those two points – so the government can’t read your tweets, the national firewall won’t be able to see what pages your viewing or block them, and someone on the public WiFi won’t be able to grab your passwords. Of course, every user on the internet must have an IP address, and usually it’s quite easy to grab the details of who was on that IP at a precise time from your ISP. With a VPN though, your IP will be in a remote location on ibVPN’s servers. If a government agency was to try and subpoena those records, they would find none, because none are kept.

A pleasant bonus to having your IP address located in a different country is that you will also be able to watch streaming video services such as BBC iPlayer (UK) or Hulu (USA) that are normally restricted to viewers within that country.

Types of VPN

There are three main types of VPN, and ibVPN offers all of them. A PPTP connection is the easiest to set up, but not 100% secure. To simply get an IP address in America for Hulu though, it is sufficient. If you’d like top security, OpenVPN is the best choice. Personally, I’d suggest OpenVPN for all your needs, and this is how I tested ibVPN.

Installation

On a Windows machine, setting up your ibVPN is a quick download away. Mac OS X is a little harder, but there are full instructions on the site. To connect to your ibVPN, right click on the new taskbar icon and choose a server.

ibVPN offers a choice of servers which will show as your physical location, and you can switch if you find one is a little slow. When the icon is red, your connection is insecure; when it’s green you are safe.

Testing

Connected to the US2 server, I was able to get a reasonable 1 MB/s download and 0.6 MB/s upload speed. While the download speed is clearly going to be lower than my regular internet speed, it is more than useable.

I tested by trying to access Hulu again, and sure enough I was able to watch the latest episodes streaming with no speed problems or jittery video.

We’re giving away 25 premium six-month subscriptions to ibVPN and here’s how you can win one.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

The giveaway code required to activate the form is available from Friday’s newsletter or on our Facebook page.

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post. There are 2 options to choose from or you can do both!

Like it on Facebook

Or share it on Twitter

Giveaway eligibility
In accordance with Facebook’s Promotional Guidelines 2.4.2 and 2.4.3:
Individuals who are over the age of 18. If you are under 18, get your parents to participate on your behalf;
Individuals who reside in a country embargoed by the United States; Belgium, Norway, Sweden, or India are not permitted to enter.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, February 25th at 2100hrs PST. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank ibVPN for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

2 Free VPN Services For Secure Browsing On Your iOS Device

Nancy Messieh — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 17:31:14 +0000

We recently published an article explaining what a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is, along with a list of free VPN services that allow you to anonymise the Internet browsing experience on your computers. If you want to do the same on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touches, there are a couple of free options that are worth looking into.

The reason for using a free VPN service on your phone is exactly the same as using them on your computer. For example, you may want to access websites or apps that have been blocked by your ISP or are not available in your country, or you may want to encrypt all inbound and outbound data. It has to be said that, as with any free service, there are certain concessions you may have to accept such as limited bandwidth, while also bearing in mind the risk involved in using a free service when accessing sensitive information.

VPN Express

VPN Express [iTunes link] is a free iPhone/iPad app that gives you 100MB of free, encrypted browsing on your iOS device.

After installing the app on your device, the first thing you will need to do is register for a free account within the app, which requires only your email address and a password. If a VPN Express member referred you, you can also enter their email address, resulting in each of you earning additional free bandwidth.

After confirming your email address you can then manually configure your iOS device’s VPN setting. To do so, go to Settings > General > Network > VPN > Add New VPN Configuration.

From there you can enter the settings by selecting the L2TP or PPTP tab and filling in the fields as follows:

Description: VPNVIP
Server: us.vpnvip.com OR vpn.vpnvip.com
Account: Enter the email address you used when registering with VPN Express
RSA SecurID: Off
Password: Enter your password
Encryption Level: Auto
Secret: vpnvip
Send all Traffic: On
Proxy: Off

Once you’re settings are all in place, a new VPN selection will appear in the settings menu, where you can easily toggle the VPN service on and off.

When turned on, a small VPN icon will appear in the status bar.

The advantage of using an app like VPN Express on your iOS device is that the app displays all of your usage statistics, as well as displaying your remaining bandwidth on the account tab, so that you can keep track of it while you’re on the go.

If 100MB isn’t enough, VPN Express offers extremely competitive subscriptions and quotas, starting at $0.99 for 30 days and a quota of 2GB data transfer, or $.0.99 for a 1GB data plan.

Hotspot Shield

It is also possible to use Hotspot Shield, one of the 7 free services recommended on MakeUseOf before, on your iOS device.

Unlike VPN Express, you don’t have to install anything on your iPhone or iPad. First, in order to generate an account ID and password, go to the HotSpot Shield website and click on Get Account ID.

Make sure that your WiFi connection is turned off, and once again, navigate to Settings > General > Network > VPN > Add New VPN Configuration.

Select the IPSec tab and fill in the fields as follows:

Description: Hotspot Shield
Server: 68.68.107.101
Account: Enter the account ID generated in the previous step
Password: Enter the password generated in the previous step
Use Certificate: Off
Group Name: hss
Password: hss
Proxy: Off

Turn your WiFi connection back on, and as with VPN Express, turn on the VPN and when the icon appears in the status bar, you can browse the Internet safely and securely.

If you have more than one VPN configuration on your iOS device, the VPN button in the settings menu will navigate to the VPN settings page allowing you to choose which configuration you wish to use.

If you want to be absolutely sure that everything is working as it should be, look up your IP address in Safari and make sure that your location has been changed.

Which VPN service do you use on your iOS device? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: Shutterstock

7 Completely Free VPN Services To Protect Your Privacy

Tim Brookes — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:31:31 +0000

Privacy is a bit of an internet buzzword these days. Average users are now becoming more aware that the data they transfer across the big bad internet is less secure than they first thought.

There’s a few measures you can take to increase security on your end, such as installing a firewall and blocking known intrusive IP addresses that might be spying on your browsing habits.

The next step for anyone looking to take security to the next level is by using a virtual private network (VPN) to encrypt all inbound and outbound data.

What Is A Virtual Private Network?

A VPN allows you to connect your machine to a virtual network which in turn encrypts the data you send, hiding everything from the public domain. A good VPN will keep no records of your browsing history, meaning you’re essentially an anonymous user.

Many VPNs are established for office use, to allow users to log into their workplace network and gain access to services therein. Seeing as you’re reading an article about free VPN services, you’re probably more concerned about security and how you can benefit from using one.

Despite the stigma involved with taking such a hardline approach to security, you don’t necessarily need to be using the internet for illegal purposes to benefit. Much like using a proxy, a VPN can also help you access websites that may not already be available in your region.

An excellent example of this would be Hulu, and we’ve got a guide about doing it right here. Many VPN services require payment, but there’s a fair few decent free efforts out there too. Here’s a selection to get you started.

Free VPN Services

It is worth noting that despite the services listed below being completely free to use, many impose restrictions on free VPN accounts. Hopefully this list will at least give you an idea of how VPN works, and how it can benefit you. If you really like the service then many offer competitive rates as well as referral schemes and paid accounts in exchange for advertising space.

ProXPN

A free VPN service designed for use with Windows and Mac computers. ProXPN works by downloading a small free application from which to connect. The service is also compatible with the iPhone and other mobile phones that support VPN.

Interestingly you can use the iPhone setup instructions to make a connection from your PC, useful if you’re a Linux user.

GPass

The GPass service provides free VPN access as well as an impressive fast web proxy to use directly in your browser. The service is very popular in China where internet censorship is commonplace.

The service seems very hot on security (good job, really), and even goes as far as to recommend an integrity check after you’ve downloaded the software (before installing). GPass is compatible with Windows only, and does not require registration.

CyberGhost

Offering 1GB of encypted traffic per month on the free package, CyberGhost is another Windows-only VPN client. In order to use the service you are required to register for a free account which unfortunately does not allow you to pick and choose your servers.

Ideal for web surfing, but not a dedicated file sharing solution.

AnchorFree Hotspot Shield

Offering a free VPN solution for Windows, Mac and iPhone (and possibly other systems using the iPhone login information) Hotspot Shield boasts “unlimited bandwidth” to those who need it.

The service supports itself by providing advertising within web pages viewed using the service, as stated in the terms. A little bird tells me that if you’re a Firefox user you can use the NoScript extension to hide these, although I’ve not tried it myself.

Its Hidden

Originally established as a safeguard for filesharers, Its Hidden offers a competitive free service as well as paid solutions offering better contention (less users per server), professional support and dedicated IP addresses.

Registration is required, and once you’ve signed up you can connect to the service directly through your operating system by following the set-up guide, with no additional software required. The service is compatible with any operating system you happen to be using that supports VPN.

SecurityKiss

The free package provided by SecurityKiss brings you 300MB of data transfer per day, but provides an uncapped line with plenty of speed. You’ll need the SecurityKiss software to access the service, and this is only compatible with Windows.

Despite not offering a whole lot of bandwidth, SecurityKiss will suffice in unblocking web services like Skype and YouTube you might otherwise be unable to access.

Best Free VPN Service

Solely for use through your existing OS, mobile or VPN application, Best Free VPN changes its password every 12 to 24 hours to help maintain fairness for users. It’s not the speediest service around, offering only 512Kbit/s down and 256Kbit/s up.

The service doesn’t allow P2P services (no BitTorrent then) but it should suffice if you need to do any covert surfing.

Conclusion

Free things are great, but they’re also subject to a lot of use by the community. If you’re encountering problems with any of the above then you’re just better off moving on and trying another.

If you’re really serious about security (and accessing your home PCs from anywhere) then you’ll probably want to invest in a paid VPN service.

Do you use VPN? Had any luck with free services, or have you gone paid? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credits: Intro, VPN Overview

What Is The Definition Of A Virtual Private Network [Technology Explained]

Varun Kashyap — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:31:12 +0000

Networking is not at all new to the computing world. You reading these words right now is courtesy of computer networking. If your office has a number of computers, the chances are that they are on the same network allowing you to share files and folders with your colleagues and also use the same Internet connection to connect to the rest of the world. This is what is typically known as a LAN.

As organizations started spanning multiple sites, they started using WANs. What about the situations where organizations have offices spanning a number of countries? Surely connecting them with dedicated wires is no longer a cheap solution. An alternative solution that addresses most of the needs and is much more secure and reliable is that of Virtual Private Networks.

The Definition of a Virtual Private Network (VPN)?

There are a number of definitions of a Virtual Private Network depending upon which purpose it serves. The bits that are common and essential to every one of these definitions is that you use an existing network (generally a public network like the Internet) and then create a virtual network atop of that to serve some other purpose. To allow you to understand this better, let me give you an example.

Suppose your office has a network of computers which you make extensive use of when at work. Now one day you want to access your work from home, that is stored on the network computers. Obviously your home computer is not a part of the office network. You could remote login into your machine if that is an option and then use it as if you were present in the office.

The other option is that of VPN. It is a common practice these days to give employees access to VPN’s. With VPN you are essentially on the same office network although you may be at a different physical location. In this case the VPN would be configured to work over the Internet to give you access to the internal organization network.

You can thus exchange and share data as if on the internal organizational network although you are not directly connected to it. A VPN thus let you use the public network (the Internet in this case) to transmit private data.

How VPN’s Work?

There are two main technologies that facilitate the creation of VPN’s to allow you to transmit data safely and reliably over a public network. These are encryption and tunneling. Encryption in simple words, as you may know, is the act of scrambling data so that only the intended recipient can view or understand what you have sent and that it looks worthless and gibberish to other parties who may happen to view it.

Tunneling on the other hand refers to the act of creating a virtual tunnel of sorts where you place the contents of an entire packet into another packet to transmit it over the public network. The encapsulating protocol is so chosen that it is not understood by other computers or network devices over the public network which the packets may pass through.

The result of putting these two together is that you can now transmit your data without having to worry about security and reliability issues over the public network.

Advantages Of Using VPN’s

As would be clear by now, one can easily use VPN’s to connect multiple sites (think branch offices) onto the main corporate network and to gain remote access to internal organizational networks (or even your home network for that matter). It is also the cheaper solution in most of the cases when compared with traditional WANs. VPN’s are secure and offer reasonably good performance with high reliability.

Have you ever configured a VPN? What software did you use?

Image Credits: Cisco Inc, Microsoft Technet

How To Use a Fake IP Address & Mask Yourself Online

Jack Cola — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:01:00 +0000

People often say to me that they don’t like surfing the Internet as they feel every website they go to could hunt them down and knock on their door. Let me tell you this. It is not true.

However, bear in mind, that it is possible to find your location, but they would need a legal case against you to force your Internet Service Provider to hand over your details. However, if you are still worried and would like to surf the web anonymously, you will need to obtain a fake IP address to mask your online identity.

Before I get started, I should mention why people want to use a fake IP address.

They need to test if a web server is correctly configured.
A firewall has blocked them out of their own website, and they need to get back in.
They want to access something that they can’t in their location. For example Google Voice or Hulu.
They are required to connect to a VPN network.

There are many more reasons for masking your IP address, but I will not go there. There are a few ways in which you can do this.

Change Your Proxy Settings In Your Web Browser

A quick and easy way is to tell your web browser to use a proxy. So how on earth do you do that? It is quite simple actually. But first of all, you have to find a proxy to connect to. Digital Cyber Soft has an up to date list that you can use.

Just simple select a random proxy from the list.

Once you’ve picked one, just enter the settings.

In Firefox: Tools ““> Options ““> Advance ““> Network ““> Settings

Then just select Manual proxy configuration and enter the proxy IP address in HTTP Proxy and the Port number. Hit OK.

In Internet Explorer: Tools ““> Internet Options ““> Connections ““> LAN Settings. Tick Use a proxy server for your LAN and enter the Address and Port number.

Hit OK. Once that is done, you can go to CanYouSeeMe and check that your IP is different to the one before you made the changes.

Install GlypeProxy On Your Web Server

If you own a webserver, you can install a free script called GlypeProxy. This script provides you with an admin control panel so you can see what sites visitors have been searching for and other cool features.

By installing it on your own server, you can ensure that no one will be stealing your information, they won’t show you ads and you will be much safer. Before you go ahead and do this, make sure you are allowed to install it by your web hosting provider.

There is also another script that does not give you an admin panel and that is phpProxy which you can download at Sourceforge.

Install Software On Your Computer

Another way to mask your IP address or to use a fake one is to install software onto your computer. One such program is Hotspot Shield. It works by you downloading and installing a program onto your computer which creates a Virtual Private Network (or VPN) from your computer directly to one of their servers.

Use Web Proxies

One of the most common and easiest ways to hide your IP address is to use a web proxy. This is exactly the same as what I mentioned before in installing Glypeproxy, but it’s another script on another server. There are thousands of these on the internet, so its just a case of finding one that you like.

Some of the most popular, and better web proxies are:

Please use these sites at your own risk!

Connect to a VPN Network

By connecting to a VPN network such as your workplace or educational institute, when you browse the internet, your external IP address would be the place to which you are connected to. Once you connect to a VPN network, the rules of what you can do on the network will depend on the network you connect to. For example, they may block access to torrents and adult materials through their internet server.

Dave has previously discussed how to set up your own VPN with Hamachi.

So that is an overview on how you can mask yourself and use a fake IP address. However, please be very careful when you use these services, especially from other websites as you do not know what malicious code they may have put on their sites.

If you use a proxy, which one do you use? If you have any other tips, please tell us in the comments.

How to Tunnel Web Traffic with SSH Secure Shell

Jorge Sierra — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 23:01:03 +0000

If you are a Linux or UNIX user, you probably use SSH (Secure Shell) to access the command line on your machines remotely. In addition to providing secure access to shell accounts, SSH can also securely transport other kinds of web traffic as well. In a sense, it can provide you with a quick and easy VPN (Virtual Private Network) into the remote network where your SSH server resides.

First of all, you will of course need an SSH server running somewhere. Linux and OS X come with SSH servers, but there are also SSH servers available for Windows. freeSSHd is a nice free SSH server for Windows. It is a quick and easy installation and relatively easy to configure as well. You will of course need administrator privileges on the machine you install it onto.

Since you will be accessing your SSH server remotely, if it is behind a firewall or router you will have to make sure that port 22 (the default SSH port) is properly forwarded to it. Most routers have the ability to forward ports to individual machines on the local network. You’ll have to refer to the instructions for your router/firewall on how to do this.

Once you have your SSH server configured so that you can connect to it from any Internet connection, you’ll of course need a client to connect to it. Linux and OS X both have SSH clients built-in. If you’re on Windows, the client of choice is PuTTY. I will provide instructions on tunneling with PuTTY, but you can certainly use other clients as well.

First, specify the address of your SSH server in the Session section. Select SSH for the Connection type and enter 22 for the Port (or whatever external internet port you are using to connect to your SSH server).

Next, go to Connection > SSH > Tunnels. There are three types of tunnels you can set up:

Dynamic – This acts as a SOCKS proxy that can be used to tunnel traffic through the network where the SSH server resides. You can then configure applications that support SOCKS proxies (such as a web browser) to take advantage of it. I’ll demonstrate how to set up Firefox to work through a dynamic tunnel.
Local – A local tunnel will allow you to connect to the specified port on a machine residing on the same network as the SSH server. One useful example that I will show you is how to connect to a Windows computer running Remote Desktop.
Remote – As the name somewhat implies, this is the reverse of a local tunnel. You are probably less likely to use this, but it would allow machines on the SSH server network to access a machine and port on the network where your SSH client resides. I won’t go through any examples on setting up a remote port in this article.

So in the example I’m going to provide, we will say the home network has two computers. One is a Linux box running the SSH server and the other is a Windows box with Remote Desktop enabled. We want to set up two tunnels: a dynamic tunnel and a local tunnel to connect to the Windows machine via Remote desktop.

Let’s first set up a dynamic tunnel for port 1080. The port you use for a dynamic tunnel is actually arbitrary, but since port 1080 is often used for SOCKS proxies that’s what we’ll use. Type 1080 in the Source port field, select Dynamic as the port type, and then click the Add button.

Next, let’s set up the local tunnel for the computer on the network running Windows Remote Desktop. Let’s say the local IP addresses on the LAN where the SSH server resides are 192.168.1.xxx addresses. The Windows machine has a local IP of 192.168.1.100. Enter 3390 for the Source port, 192.168.1.100:3389 for the Destination, select Local for the port type, and then click the Add button. You’ll see later why I’ve configured the source port to be different than the destination.

Once you have everything configured for the connection, go back to the Session section and save your connection. Then click Open and log into your Linux box with your credentials as you normally would.

Now you have to configure your applications to use the tunnels you have set up. Let’s say you want to do your web browsing through the dynamic tunnel we set up. This is actually an extremely useful way to take advantage of SSH.

You may be on a network with some sort of firewall or content filtering that you wish to bypass. If you are able to get out on port 22 (or any other port, you’ll just have to set up your SSH server accordingly), then you’ll be able to surf wherever you want without issue through the dynamic tunnel.

It is also useful if you are surfing on a network where you may be concerned about others observing your traffic. Perhaps you are connecting from a hotel, a client site, or from work (you didn’t learn that from me) and you do not want others monitoring your traffic.

The best choice is to use Firefox, because Firefox allows you to configure the browser to also send DNS requests through the proxy. If you use Internet Explorer, your DNS requests are still made via the local network you connect from and thus can still be monitored. So Firefox would be the preferred browser if you wish to maintain privacy on the network you are connecting from.

To set up Firefox to use the dynamic tunnel as a SOCKS proxy, go to the Firefox Options > Advanced > Network and click the Settings”¦ button. In the settings page, click Manual proxy configuration, enter localhost for the SOCKS Host, and 1080 for the Port.

We’re not quite done. We still need to configure Firefox to send DNS requests to the SOCKS proxy as well. To do this, enter about:config in the navigation bar in Firefox. You may get a prompt asking you if you know what you’re doing. Assure Firefox that you know what you’re doing and proceed.

Enter socks_remote_dns for the Filter and press enter. You should see a single option that says network.proxy.socks_remote_dns. If it says false for the Value, double-click on it so that it says true. You’re now all set. You should be able to surf the web through your new secure dynamic tunnel!

Fortunately, connecting to our Windows Remote Desktop machine is much easier. You just launch the Remote Desktop Client and enter localhost:3390 for the machine address. That’s all there is to it!

The reason we set up the source port to 3390 is because the Remote Desktop Client will not allow you to connect to the default remote desktop port (3389) on the local machine. So that’s why we used 3390 instead (we could have used any port, I just use 3390 because it’s easy for me to remember).

The source port you use for setting up the tunnels is arbitrary. We could have used 1234 instead of 3390 if we wanted to, as long as nothing is running on the local machine at port 1234. What is not arbitrary is what you use on the destination IP and port. For that you will need to use the proper IP address and port for the service you wish to connect to.

You can set up tunnel for any service on any IP anywhere. You’ll just need to set up the program to connect to localhost on the source port you set up for the tunnel. It’s a pretty nifty way to connect to stuff you may not be able to otherwise, due firewall issues you may encounter. All you need is a single port to get to your SSH server, and it of course has to be running on that port.

Do you use SSH tunnels? What sorts of cool things do you use them for?

Photo Credit: kreg.steppe

Extend Google Talk Into A Remote Access Tool With GBridge

T.J. Mininday — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:01:28 +0000

As PCs continue to expand beyond just the work environment, more and more people are buying more computers for home and travel. They have their desktop computer at home, a laptop at home, a laptop at work and maybe even a desktop at work. Keeping all of these in sync and on the same page is virtually impossible.

Many different companies have come up with many different ways for accessing each of these systems in different ways. Some of these include GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, Windows Remote Desktop, VNC and several other remote access tools that we have profiled on MakeUseOf.

However most of these require some type of firewall configuration, or cost money or are just incredibly insecure. One virtually unknown product, GBridge, provides remote access, file sharing, file syncing and backup capabilities, all only requiring a Google account.

GBridge uses what they call a ‘Revolutionary VPN Infrastructure’ to extend Google’s GTalk into a secure collaboration tool. Once the product is installed (Windows Only), it simply asks for your Google Talk account and automatically displays the rest of your GTalk friends that may or may not have the product installed. If they do have it installed, you may collaborate with them, using each of the tools I am going to describe below. This is all done with a simple install, and no firewall configuration.

Desktop Sharing

GBridge utilizes VNC to not only access your own computer, but also any of your friends or family PC’s to access them remotely and control their desktop. Again this only requires that they have GBridge installed and that they have a Google Talk account.

SecureShare

The SecureShare portion of GBridge allows for quick and easy access to any files on your additional computers with extreme VPN-like security. You can then again allow only certain friends to access these shares as well. Very handy for quickly transferring files without e-mail or FTP-like transferring.

AutoSync

Keep folders in synchronization across the globe. Removes the need to manually transfer and update files on a regular basis. With no size limitations, auto scheduling and even incremental transfers.

EasyBackup

Set up automatic scheduled backups to local or remote locations. Gives you peace of mind having your critical data stored off site somewhere.

GBridge is a very slick application that is very easy to setup on any Windows 2000, XP or Vista machine and gives you all the big capabilities of the remote access tools, plus much more.

Do you have any similar secure solutions like GBridge?