VPN
A VPN is a system that establishes a private network across a public network, such as the Internet
Use in Dev Server
OSE launched a single staging/dev server in Hetzner Cloud in 2019. For security reasons it's imperative that this server is locked-down and sitting *behind* a VPN.
Important Files & Directories
For more information about our vpn configuration, please see the following files & directories on the osedev1 server:
/usr/share/easy-rsa/3/pki//etc/openvpn/
How to connect to the VPN
Execute openvpn with sudo, passing it your client config file.
cd openvpn sudo openvpn client.conf
You will be prompted for two credentials:
Enter Auth Password:- This is your 2FA 6-digit token that changes every 30 seconds. Get it from your 2FA FLOSS TOTP app-of-choice.Enter Private Key Password:- This is the passphrase you used to symmetrically encrypt your OpenVPN client RSA certificate when you were first setup with access to the OSE VPN. Check your personal password database.
Developers: How to request access to the dev VPN
This section is intended for the OSE Developer that requires access to the developer VPN and would like to make a request for access to the OSE sysadmin.
Install Prerequisites
In order to connect to our vpn, you should install the following prerequisite software
sudo apt-get install openvpn openresolv easy-rsa
Now generate a RSA certificate and certificate signing request
cd $HOME mkdir openvpn cd /usr/share/easy-rsa source vars KEY_DIR=$HOME/openvpn KEY_CONFIG=/etc/ssl/openssl.cnf # inputs echo -n "Enter your two-digit country code: "; read KEY_COUNTRY echo -n "Enter your state/province: "; read KEY_PROVINCE echo -n "Enter your city: "; read KEY_CITY echo -n "Enter the name of your organization: "; read KEY_ORG echo -n "Enter your email address: "; read KEY_EMAIL # generate certificate request ./build-req `whoami`
Sysadmin: How to grant access to the dev VPN
This section is intended for the OSE sysadmin and will describe the process of granting access to the developer VPN for OSE developers.
First, make sure that the user requesting access to the dev VPN has a valid reason to need this access. Iff the request is valid, then proceed:
On the dev node, create a OS-level user on the OSE Development server and add the developer's public ssh key to their authorized_keys file
user@ose:~$ ssh osedev1 Last login: Tue Dec 3 12:40:51 2019 from 182.74.197.50 [maltfield@osedev1 ~]$ sudo su - Last login: Mon Dec 2 15:21:42 CET 2019 on pts/17 [root@osedev1 ~]# adduser marcin [root@osedev1 ~]# mkdir /home/marcin/.ssh/ [root@osedev1 ~]# echo "ssh-rsa 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 marcin@Precision-M6500" >> /home/marcin/.ssh/authorized_keys [root@osedev1 ~]# chown -R marcin:marcin /home/marcin/.ssh [root@osedev1 ~]# chmod -R 0600 /home/marcin/.ssh [root@osedev1 ~]# chmod 0700 /home/marcin/.ssh [root@osedev1 ~]#
Now have the user ssh into the dev server, generate a 2FA TOTP secret key, and scan it into their 2FA FLOSS app-of-choice.
marcin@Precision-M6500:~$ ssh -p 32415 marcin@195.201.233.113 [marcin@osedev1 ~]$ google-authenticator --time-based --disallow-reuse --issuer "vpn.opensourceecology.org" --label "`whoami`@osedev1" --emergency-codes=1 --window-size=8 --rate-limit=2 --rate-time=30
Looking Forward
Ideally, OSE would have a single rack of colocated hardware at a datacenter near FeF. As campuses pop-up, we could provision new racks at new datacenters that peer with each-other over time, if needed.
The reality is that we have a dedicated server in Falkenstein, Germany[1]; a cloud instance at a different DC in Falkenstein; a physical office in Missouri, USA that will likely have servers in the future[2]; and developers (some with their own servers) all over the world -- which begs the question: how do you architect a VPN with this hodge-podge of geographically dispersed servers & clients?
Certainly a hub-and-spoke [3] openvpn model is possible, but that introduces a single-point-of-failure.
A better option would be a decentralized mesh-style VPN solution, such as ZeroTier.