Hacking Raspberry Pi (2014)

Part III. Basic Raspberry Pi Projects

Chapter 17. Raspberry Pi Security and Privacy Device

When it comes to electronics and computing, the words security and privacy could mean a lot of different things. In this case I’m talking about using your Pi to maximize your security and privacy when online. Even more specifically, I’m referring to securing your personal and financial details.

I want to lead off this chapter by presenting to you three unfortunate scenarios that can be prevented by configuring your Raspberry Pi as a security and privacy device.

Scenario #1: You live in the United States, and you enjoy your subscription to Netflix very much. However, you find that whenever you visit other countries, especially in Europe and the Far East, that you are unable to access the Netflix services you pay for due to international licensing laws.

Scenario #2: You enjoy taking your laptop computer to the neighborhood coffee house and working while sipping espresso and munching scones. The free, public Wi-Fi service gives you adequate Internet access speed. Nonetheless, you discover three months later that your bank accounts have been compromised because a hacker captured your logon credentials over the air during one of your coffee house web browsing sessions.

Scenario #3: You are a traveling salesperson who spends much of your time doing your work and browsing the Web from hotel rooms. You’ve become increasingly irritated at how much of the Web is blocked by hotel access restrictions.

This chapter is all about leveraging your $25 or $35 Raspberry Pi computer to provide yourself with secure and potentially anonymous Internet access. Your first order of business, of course, is to define your terms. Let’s start off with the concept of the virtual private network and why it’s important.

Encrypting Your Internet Connection with a VPN

A virtual private network, or VPN, is a secure, point-to-point network connection that is tunneled through an unsecure medium. You can certainly agree that the public Internet represents an unsecure medium; a wild jungle is more like it.

A VPN involves the construction of a temporary or permanent data communications channel that takes advantage of the Internet’s speed and reliability, but offers security in that all traffic tunneled through the VPN connection is encrypted.

VPNs are the de facto method that businesses use to offer remote employees access to confidential, internal network resources such as shared files, intranet websites, and so forth.

If there is a downside to VPNs, it is their lack of speed. Due to the heavy overhead of data encryption and decryption, network access over a VPN pipe is noticeably, and sometimes unbearably, slower than over an unencrypted link.

That brings up the delicate balancing act between increased security on one hand and user convenience on the other. Where are you comfortable drawing the line?

From the perspective of the corporate IT manager, setting up a VPN server can be pretty tough. You ordinarily have to provision dedicated hardware and software in order to manage the myriad network protocols that constitute VPN circuits.

What many people don’t know is that it is relatively easy to create your own VPN environment, even at home, by using hosted VPN services. Two major players in the hosted VPN arena are

LogMeIn Hamachi: http://is.gd/PtTdkV

OpenVPN: http://is.gd/uSoYCp

What is cool about both of these services is that because they operate over standard web protocols, you don’t have to forward any ports on your router or worry about your Internet access provider blocking traditional VPN ports.

For instance, I’ve stayed at hotels that charge guests two different prices for Internet access depending on whether the guest needs VPN access or not.

However, in my experience Hamachi is much more of a turnkey solution than OpenVPN, so I focus on this product in this chapter.

Okay...so you understand that a VPN connection gives you security and privacy by protecting all data between your computer and the Internet. What does that have to do with the Raspberry Pi? Moreover, how does a VPN enable you to cloak your geographic location?

The truth of the matter is, a VPN alone cannot give you true web browsing freedom. For that purpose we need a proxy server.

Browsing Where You Want via a Proxy Server

A proxy server is a networking device that connects to Internet resources on behalf of another computer. For instance, you may find that network broadcasting agreements prevent your favorite sports game from being broadcast in your current location. Wouldn’t it be cool to have your computer appear as if it were connecting from another location so you could watch your game?