Evaggelos Balaskas - System Engineer

• A Dead Simple VPN

DSVPN is designed to address the most common use case for using a VPN

Works with TCP, blocks IPv6 leaks, redirect-gateway out-of-the-box!

last updated: 20190810

• iptables rules example added
• change vpn.key to dsvpn.key
• add base64 example for easy copy/transfer across machines

dsvpn binary

I keep a personal gitlab CI for dsvpn here: DSVPN

Compile

Notes on the latest ubuntu:18.04 docker image:

# git clone https://github.com/jedisct1/dsvpn.git
Cloning into 'dsvpn'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 88, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (88/88), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (59/59), done.
remote: Total 478 (delta 47), reused 65 (delta 29), pack-reused 390
Receiving objects: 100% (478/478), 93.24 KiB | 593.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (311/311), done.

# cd dsvpn

# ls
LICENSE  Makefile  README.md  include  logo.png  src

# make
cc -march=native -Ofast -Wall -W -Wshadow -Wmissing-prototypes -Iinclude -o dsvpn src/dsvpn.c src/charm.c src/os.c
strip dsvpn

# ldd dsvpn
linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffd409ba000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fd78480b000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fd784e03000)

# ls -l dsvpn
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 26840 Jul 20 15:51 dsvpn

Just copy the dsvpn binary to your machines.

Symmetric Key

dsvpn uses symmetric-key cryptography, that means both machines uses the same encyrpted key.

dd if=/dev/urandom of=dsvpn.key count=1 bs=32

Copy the key to both machines using a secure media, like ssh.

base64

An easy way is to convert key to base64

cat dsvpn.key | base64

ZqMa31qBLrfjjNUfhGj8ADgzmo8+FqlyTNJPBzk/x4k=

on the other machine:

echo ZqMa31qBLrfjjNUfhGj8ADgzmo8+FqlyTNJPBzk/x4k= | base64 -d > dsvpn.key

Server

It is very easy to run dsvpn in server mode:

eg.

dsvpn server dsvpn.key auto

Interface: [tun0]
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
Listening to *:443

ip addr show tun0

4: tun0: <POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 9000 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN group default qlen 500
    link/none
    inet 192.168.192.254 peer 192.168.192.1/32 scope global tun0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

I prefer to use 10.8.0.0/24 CIDR in my VPNs, so in my VPN setup:

dsvpn server /root/dsvpn.key auto 443 auto 10.8.0.254 10.8.0.2

Using 10.8.0.254 as the VPN Server IP.

systemd service unit - server

I’ve created a simple systemd script dsvpn_server.service

or you can copy it from here:

/etc/systemd/system/dsvpn.service

[Unit]
Description=Dead Simple VPN - Server

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/dsvpn server /root/dsvpn.key auto 443 auto 10.8.0.254 10.8.0.2
Restart=always
RestartSec=20

[Install]
WantedBy=network.target

and then:

systemctl enable dsvpn.service
systemctl  start dsvpn.service

Client

It is also easy to run dsvpn in client mode:

eg.

dsvpn client dsvpn.key 93.184.216.34

# dsvpn client dsvpn.key 93.184.216.34
Interface: [tun0]
Trying to reconnect
Connecting to 93.184.216.34:443...
net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = bbr
Connected

ip addr show tun0

4: tun0: <POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 9000 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN group default qlen 500
    link/none
    inet 192.168.192.1 peer 192.168.192.254/32 scope global tun0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

dsvpn works in redict-gateway mode,
so it will apply routing rules to pass all the network traffic through the VPN.

ip route list

0.0.0.0/1 via 192.168.192.254 dev tun0
default via 192.168.122.1 dev eth0 proto static
93.184.216.34 via 192.168.122.1 dev eth0
128.0.0.0/1 via 192.168.192.254 dev tun0
192.168.122.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.122.69
192.168.192.254  dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.192.1

As I mentioned above, I prefer to use 10.8.0.0/24 CIDR in my VPNs, so in my VPN client:

dsvpn client /root/dsvpn.key 93.184.216.34 443 auto 10.8.0.2 10.8.0.254

Using 10.8.0.2 as the VPN Client IP.

ip addr show tun0

11: tun0: <POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 9000 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN group default qlen 500
    link/none
    inet 10.8.0.2 peer 10.8.0.254/32 scope global tun0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

systemd service unit - client

I’ve also created a simple systemd script for the client dsvpn_client.service

or you can copy it from here:

/etc/systemd/system/dsvpn.service

[Unit]
Description=Dead Simple VPN - Client

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/dsvpn client /root/dsvpn.key 93.184.216.34 443 auto 10.8.0.2 10.8.0.254
Restart=always
RestartSec=20

[Install]
WantedBy=network.target

and then:

systemctl enable dsvpn.service
systemctl  start dsvpn.service

and here is an MTR from the client:

Enjoy !

firewall

It is important to protect your traffic from network leaks. That mean, sometimes, we do not want our network traffic to pass through our provider if the vpn server/client went down. To prevent any network leak, here is an example of iptables rules for a virtual machine:

# Empty iptables rule file
*filter
:INPUT   ACCEPT [0:0]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT  ACCEPT [0:0]

-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m conntrack --ctstate INVALID -j DROP
-A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type 8 -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j ACCEPT

# LibVirt
-A INPUT -i eth0 -s 192.168.122.0/24 -j ACCEPT

# Reject incoming traffic
-A INPUT -j REJECT

# DSVPN
-A OUTPUT -p tcp -m tcp -o eth0 -d 93.184.216.34 --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
# LibVirt
-A OUTPUT -o eth0 -d 192.168.122.0/24 -j ACCEPT
# Allow tun
-A OUTPUT -o tun+ -j ACCEPT

# Reject outgoing traffic
-A OUTPUT -p tcp -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset
-A OUTPUT -p udp -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-port-unreachable

COMMIT

Here is the prefable output: