Every day millions of people uses different VPN service providers to
protect their online privacy. But it not all VPN providers are as anonymous or
as secured or dedicated to protecting your Online privacy as they claim to be.
I
never cared for BT, but I guess no discrimination on any type of traffic.
Which payment systems do you use and how are
these linked to individual user accounts?
Anything and everything. Best
would be BitCoin. Setup own BTminer and pay with that. In that way, little/no
online trace whatever.
What is the most secure VPN connection and
encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users?
AES-128, RSA2048 or higher
supported. Don’t use SHA1.
As I mostly
use Kali Linux, my primary concentration would be on that. However, Kali Linux
and Ubuntu uses same Network Manager, so this guide applies to the any Debian
variant such as Kali Linux, and Ubuntu variants such as Linux Mint etc.
In short, if you follow this guide, you will be able to setup VPN on Kali
Linux, Ubuntu, Debian Linux Mint etc.
Setup
VPN on Kali Linux
I use Kali
Linux despite many of it’s flaw and shortcomings and I have became used to it.
If you’re seriously about Online privacy, stick with the distro you know and
understand best. Kali is just another Linux distro and it is as secured as you
make it. There are many ways you can do it. VPN to Tor to VPN via anon proxy.
Why use VPN – benefits?
Here’s my top
11 reasons why you would want to use VPN services.
- VPN provides Privacy and cloaks your IP address.
- Use any network (public or private or free WiFi) with encryption
- Login to your home or Work network from anywhere with confidence.
- Bypass censorship and content monitoring.
- Browse and bypass Firewall and censorship policy at work or Anywhere!
- Access region restricted services from anywhere (i.e. Youtube videos, NetFlix or BBC Player etc.)
- Transfer or receive files with privacy.
- Hide your voice/VOIP calls.
- Use Search Engines while hiding some of your identity.
- Hide yourself
- Cause you like to be anonymous.
As you can see
from the list above, VPN not necessarily hides everything. Search engines can
probably still recognizes you based on your cookies, previous browsing
behavior, account sign-in (duh!), browser plug-ins (i.e. Alexa, Google Toolbar
etc.).
Step 1: Enabling VPN on Kali Linux
By
default the VPN section is grayed out on Kali Linux. You can follow my guide on fixing VPN grayed out
issue (with screengrabs) or just copy paste
the commands from below:
There’s two
variants on the commands I’ve used, the first one enables all sorts of VPN and
PPTP mumbo-junbo’s so that you don’t have to work your way through it later.
root@kali:~# aptitude -r install network-manager-openvpn-gnome network-manager-pptp
network-manager-pptp-gnome network-manager-strongswan network-manager-vpnc
network-manager-vpnc-gnome
The second one
is more specific to VPN and just enabling VPN
On some cases,
you might have to restart network-manager and networking,
[....] Running /etc/init.d/networking restart is deprecated because it may not r[warnble
some interfaces ... (warning).
[ ok ] Reconfiguring network interfaces...done.
root@kali:~#
root@kali:~# service network-manager restart
[ ok ] Stopping network connection manager: NetworkManager.
[ ok ] Starting network connection manager: NetworkManager.
root@kali:~#
Once
done, it will fix your VPN grayed out issues. For other Linux distro, this
isn’t so much of a problem as those packages are usually pre-installed. (which
I find a waste as your distro becomes bulkier).
Step 2: Download and extract openvpn certs from PIA
Download
and extract the openvpn.zip file containing ca.crt in
the correct directory:
root@kali:~# wget https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/openvpn/openvpn.zip
--2015-02-27 13:14:14-- https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/openvpn/openvpn.zip
Resolving www.privateinternetaccess.com (www.privateinternetaccess.com)... 23.215.245.45
Connecting to www.privateinternetaccess.com (www.privateinternetaccess.com)
|23.215.245.45|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 8242 (8.0K) [application/zip]
Saving to: `openvpn.zip'
100%[======================================>] 8,242 --.-K/s in 0s
2015-02-27 13:14:15 (149 MB/s) - `openvpn.zip' saved [8242/8242]
root@kali:~#
root@kali:~# unzip -q openvpn.zip -d /etc/openvpn
root@kali:~#
Step 3: Configure Network Manager to use PIA VPN
Go
to Network Manager > Edit
Connections
Change to VPN Tab. VPN> Add
Click [ADD +]
click the drop down menu, and set the type as OpenVPN.
Click [Create]
Click [Create]
Go to “VPN” and
fill up the following details”.
- Connection name:
- Gateway:
- Username:
- Password:
- CA Certificate: Browse to and select
- Click [Advanced]: Check the box next to “Use LZO data compression“
- Click [OK], [Save] and then [Close].
As
for Gateways, choose on the following depending on your location:
PIA Regional
Gateways
- United States (US VPN)
us-east.privateinternetaccess.com
us-west.privateinternetaccess.com
us-texas.privateinternetaccess.com
us-california.privateinternetaccess.com
us-florida.privateinternetaccess.com
- Canada (CA VPN)
ca-toronto.privateinternetaccess.com
- United Kingdom (UK VPN)
uk-southampton.privateinternetaccess.com
- Switzerland (Swiss VPN)
- Netherlands (NL VPN)
- Sweden (SE VPN)
- France (FR VPN)
- Germany (DE VPN)
- Romania (RO VPN)
- Hong Kong (HK VPN)
- Israel (Israel VPN)
- Australia (Australia VPN)
- Japan (Japan VPN)
Step 4: Connect to
PIA VPN
Click Network
Manager > VPN Connections
> PrivateInternetAccess VPN
You will see a yellowish colored connection
indicator while connecting.
Setting up VPN on Ubuntu
Ubuntu parts were taken from PIA support site. This also covers Linux Mint or any
Ubuntu variants.
This is almost as easy as it gets. There’s 3
variations you can try to connect to PIA
- Use PIA script for Ubuntu 12.04 or higher
- Setup manually via Network Manager for Ubuntu 12.04 or higher
- Setup manually via Network Manager for Ubuntu 10.10
- Ubuntu 1 : Ubuntu Linux 12.04: OpenVPN Installer
- Download the openvpn ubuntu installer
- Run sudo sh ~/Downloads/install_ubuntu.sh (replace path to installer accordingly)
- Type ‘y’ to install python 2.7 in case it’s not installed.
- Type ‘y’ to install network-manager-openvpn in case it’s not installed.
- Enter the login for your account.
- Wait for the installation to finish.
- Connect using the Network Manager.
- Enter your password when prompted (only needs to be done once per region).
Ubuntu 2: Ubuntu
Linux 12.04: OpenVPN via Network Manager Setup
Open a Terminal, and run:
sudo apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn
network-manager-openvpn-gnome. This will prompt for both your password, and a
Y/n answer, please provide it with your password, and Y
Once installed, open System Settings,
then Network
Press the + symbol to add a new connection, and
select the VPN Interface, then press Create
Choose OpenVPN as your VPN Connection Type, and press Create
The
following will walk you though all configuration steps needed for the PIA VPN.
Gateway: Select one of the Hostnames provided on the Network page
Authentication
- Type: Password
- Username: The username provided with the PIA account
- Password: The password provided with the PIA account
CA Certificate: Downloaded this zip file and extract
the ca.crt file to somewhere it won’t be deleted.
We suggest your Home folder. If you extract this to your home folder, when
searching for it, please click on your username on the left side, which will
take you right to the home folder, then select the ca.crt file from the options
on the right.
Advanced: Under the general tab, check the Use LZO data compression
IPv4
Settings:
Method: Automatic (VPN) Addresses Only
Press Save. If you chose
to have your password saved it may ask for you to verify your password to open
your keyring.
Once
connected, you would like to head the following websites to confirm if you are
leaking any informations
- For DNS Leak test, check here:
- For Email leak test, check here:
- Those who uses ipv6, check your leaks here:
