How to use an open hotspot securely

When using a hotspot, your communications are completely open for anyone to see.  Our goal is secure the communications you have at the hotspot, back to your desktop at home.  We’re going to do this with help from a few different sources.  I am going to assume that you are running Windows on your desktop at home and have a router sitting between your home network connection and your desktop computer.  I am going to outline the process here, and provide specific details in posts to come.

First, download and install VMWare’s free server application.  This will allow you to either build or download a virtual Linux system.  (My preference here is a minimal install of Debian.)  You can choose just about any version that makes you comfortable.   

Second, acquire or install your virtual Linux distribution.  You can go as far as installing a full desktop (Ubuntu) or a minimal install of another version.  Once this is installed, you will need to install and configure OpenSSH Server. Be sure to change the default port and remove the ability of root to login remotely.  After you have this up and running, make a note of your virtual system’s IP address and the OpenSSH server port number.

Third, log into your router and forward your OpenSSH server port to the IP address of your virtual Linux machine.  Also make a note of your external IP address.  (As an option here, you could sign up for a free account at dyndns.org, and have your router check in and update your ip address, if supported.)

If you are running a Windows machine, you can download the command line version of Putty (I changed the filename of my copy to ’ssh’ for simplicity.) and establish a secure connection to your home virtual Linux machine.  Then you just need to point your local browser to a SOCKS proxy on your local machine, and you will then have a secure, encrypted connection back to your home network. *nix users already have a built in ssh client.

Again, these are the concepts that I’ll be discussing in detail over the next few posts.   

~ by Sumo on March 11, 2008.