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Build Your Own Secure Personal Cloud

Take back control of your private data.

Michael Lindner

Remove your data from Google, Apple, Dropbox and Github using Linux based server software and machines You control and own. Keep your files, contacts, calendar, mail, photos, music and projects in sync across all your devices. Always access your data and the Internet through your own Private VPN, keeping you safe from prying eyes.

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About

About

About the Book

Build a small, private network of Linux servers to securely store and transport your private data across your various devices.

Securely share Contacts, Email, Photos, Files, Music and Notes across all your computers, smart phones and tablets, without the need for third party companies such as Google, Dropbox or Apple iCloud.

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Author

About the Author

Michael Lindner

Hi!

I'm a professional Linux Systems Administrator and Certified Ethical Hacker who has been programming, building, breaking and fixing computers my entire life. From playing with mainframes in the 1970s, discovering as a little kid what "10 goto 10" did to the Big Iron of the era (not pretty), to the 80s teenage hacker thing, bulletin boards and wardialing with acoustic modem and green screen monitor, to now working for companies such as Boeing, Telstra, IBM and HP, advising on Linux systems and security.

My first writing was for a local user group newsletter with a circulation of some thousands during high school in the 80s, becoming editor at 15. Now days most of my writing is internal documentation for clients and sporadic posts on mikelindner.com. I live in Melbourne, Australia and spend my offline time enjoying the city's awesome culture.

Michael.

Contents

Table of Contents

About The Author

Acknowledgements

Copyright, Trademarks, Disclaimers and Feedback.

Introduction

  1. Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability.
  2. Why we keep secrets and why we all need privacy
  3. The modern Internet, privacy and your data.
  4. Why I wrote this book
  5. What this book covers
  6. Who should buy this book
  7. What this book isn’t
  8. Compatibility
  9. Notes at the start you must read.
  10. Warnings
  11. Tips
  12. Known bugs and software limitations
  13. Information

1.The Cloud Design

  1. What you will need
  2. Choosing and Placing a home server
  3. Storing files securely on USB or Hard Disk

2.Certificates and Keys

  1. A simple little primer Public Key Encryption
  2. OpenSSL
  3. Keep your Private CA Files Secure!
  4. Creating Your Certificate Authority
  5. Publish Your CA Certificate
  6. Importing your CA into various devices.
  7. Firefox
  8. Chrome
  9. Internet Explorer
  10. Android
  11. Creating Certificates
  12. A bit about easy-rsa
  13. make-key.sh
  14. Revoking certificates
  15. SSH Keys
  16. Creating an SSH key pair on Linux and Mac
  17. Creating an SSH key pair with Windows

3.Domain Names and Networking

  1. Services we’ll use
  2. Domain Name
  3. Virtual Private Cloud
  4. IP Addresses
  5. Fake IP Addresses
  6. DNS Records
  7. Create Security Groups
  8. VPN Host
  9. Web/Mail Server
  10. Locking Down Security Groups
  11. Import your SSH Key Pairs

4.Building the Linux Boxes.

  1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  2. Building the Amazon EC2 Servers
  3. Assign Elastic IPs
  4. Logging in and configuring AWS Servers
  5. SSH Into your new server:
  6. Change it’s hostname
  7. Set Nameservers
  8. Set your time-zone:
  9. Add Swap
  10. Install Patches and Utilities
  11. Installing VMware ESXi
  12. Booting ESXi
  13. Installing ESXi
  14. Configuring ESXi
  15. The ESXi Home Screen
  16. Set a Static IP
  17. Building Ubuntu Servers on vSphere
  18. Downloading Ubuntu
  19. Installing vSphere console
  20. Uploading the Ubuntu ISO to the vSphere server
  21. Building your two VMs
  22. The Ubuntu Installation Process
  23. Starting the VMs
  24. Starting the Ubuntu Installer
  25. Location Settings
  26. Setting Names
  27. Disk Setup
  28. The install process
  29. Setting Timezone
  30. Final Steps – Logging in and patching

5.The VPN Server

  1. Now for something really fun.
  2. Differences between the two servers
  3. External VPN - Connect in from anywhere
  4. Installing OpenVPN Access Server.
  5. Extra Privacy
  6. Installing your Certificates on the Web Interface
  7. Downloading your profile
  8. Internal VPN - Connect your cloud servers securely
  9. Installing your certificates into OpenVPN
  10. Fixed IP Addresses for your servers.

6.Mail and Web server.

  1. Control Panel Software
  2. Database
  3. Amazon RDS
  4. Mail Server
  5. Web Server Software
  6. Securing The Administration Interface with your Own Certificates
  7. Tip for the extra sneaky:
  8. Securing your email server
  9. Adding a domain
  10. Adding an email user

7.File, Contact and Calendar Server

  1. The most awesome bit.
  2. Props to the programmers
  3. Super Secure
  4. Installing NextCloud
  5. Building your Home Data Silo
  6. Encrypting files on the server
  7. Testing the encryption
  8. Storing your admin recovery key
  9. Limitations

8.Getting your data back

  1. Exporting from Google
  2. Downloading all email to your mailserver
  3. Some notes on maildir
  4. A Recipe with getmail
  5. Downloading your contacts
  6. vCard
  7. Downloading your calendar
  8. Downloading your tasks list
  9. Importing contacts into NextCloud
  10. Importing calendar into Cloud
  11. Moving from Dropbox

9.Server Hardening

  1. Make sure you get all the mail for root
  2. SSHGuard
  3. Apticron
  4. Logwatch
  5. Stop services you won’t use
  6. Harden

10.Lets Encrypt

  1. Securing the Sentora Control Panel with LetsEncrypt
  2. Certificates for individual domains

11.Becoming a Spam Ninja

  1. I thought spam was dead!
  2. What is Spam
  3. Anti-Spam Legislation
  4. Use your brain!
  5. Postfix
  6. Tailing log files
  7. If it smells like spam and looks like spam…

12.Data Hygiene and Bad Habits you can just avoid.

  1. duckduckgo.com
  2. TOR
  3. LastPass
  4. OK is not OK
  5. Antivus doesn’t help much

Appendix A. Known Issues and Workarounds

Appendix B. Important Files and Useful Commands

  1. Web and Mail Server

References

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