Build Your Own Secure Personal Cloud
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Build Your Own Secure Personal Cloud

Take back control of your private data.

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.

About the Author

Michael Lindner
Michael Lindner

Mike Lindner is a professional Linux Systems Administrator and Certified Ethical Hacker who has been programming, building, breaking and fixing computers his entire life. From playing with mainframes at his dad's office in the 1970s, discovering as a little kid what “10 goto 10” did to 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.

He first wrote for a local user group newsletter with a circulation of some ten thousand during high school in the 80s becoming editor at age 15. Now days most of his writing is internal documentation for clients, apart from his blog he's sure no-one reads, this is his first full book for public consumption.

He lives in Melbourne Australia, obsessed with food, the local music scene, and RM Williams boots.

Table of Contents

  • About The Author
  • Acknowledgements
  • Copyright, Trademarks, Disclaimers and Feedback.
  • Introduction
    • Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability.
    • Why we keep secrets and why we all need privacy
    • The modern Internet, privacy and your data.
    • Why I wrote this book
    • What this book covers
    • Who should buy this book
    • What this book isn’t
    • Notes at the start you must read.
  • 1. The Cloud Design
    • What you will need
    • Storing files securely on USB or Hard Disk
  • 2. Certificates and Keys
    • A simple little primer Public Key Encryption
    • OpenSSL
    • Creating Your Certificate Authority
    • Publish Your CA Certificate
    • Importing your CA into various devices.
      • Firefox
      • Chrome
      • Internet Explorer
      • Android
    • Creating Certificates
    • A bit about easy-rsa
    • make-key.sh
    • SSH Keys
      • Creating an SSH key pair on Linux and Mac
      • Creating an SSH key pair with Windows
  • 3. Domain Names and Networking
    • Services we’ll use
    • Domain Name
    • Virtual Private Cloud
    • IP Addresses
    • DNS Records
    • Create Security Groups
      • VPN Host
      • Web/Mail Server
    • Import your SSH Key Pairs
  • 4. Building the Linux Boxes.
    • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
      • Building the Amazon EC2 Servers
      • Assign Elastic IPs
    • Logging in and configuring AWS Servers
      • SSH Into your new server:
      • Change it’s hostname
      • Set Nameservers
      • Set your time-zone:
      • Add Swap
      • Install Patches and Utilities
    • Installing VMware ESXi
      • Booting ESXi
      • Installing ESXi
    • Configuring ESXi
      • The ESXi Home Screen
      • Set a Static IP
    • Building Ubuntu Servers on vSphere
      • Downloading Ubuntu
      • Installing vSphere console
      • Uploading the Ubuntu ISO to the vSphere server
      • Building your two VMs
    • The Ubuntu Installation Process
      • Starting the VMs
      • Starting the Ubuntu Installer
      • Location Settings
      • Setting Names
      • Disk Setup
      • The install process
      • Setting Timezone
      • Final Steps – Logging in and patching
  • 5. The VPN Server
    • Now for something really fun.
    • Differences between the two servers
    • External VPN - Connect in from anywhere
      • Installing OpenVPN Access Server.
      • Installing your Certificates on the Web Interface
      • Downloading your profile
    • Internal VPN - Connect your cloud servers securely
    • Installing your certificates into OpenVPN
    • Fixed IP Addresses for your servers.
  • 6. Mail and Web server.
    • Control Panel Software
    • Database
      • Amazon RDS
    • Mail Server
    • Web Server Software
    • Securing The Administration Interface with your Own Certificates
    • Securing your email server
    • Adding a domain
    • Adding an email user
  • 7. File, Contact and Calendar Server
    • The most awesome bit.
    • Props to the programmers
    • Super Secure
    • Installing NextCloud
    • Building your Home Data Silo
    • Encrypting files on the server
      • Testing the encryption
      • Storing your admin recovery key
    • Limitations
  • 8. Getting your data back
    • Exporting from Google
    • Downloading all email to your mailserver
      • Some notes on maildir
      • A Recipe with getmail
    • Downloading your contacts
    • Downloading your calendar
    • Downloading your tasks list
    • Importing contacts into NextCloud
    • Importing calendar into Cloud
    • Moving from Dropbox
  • 9. Server Hardening
    • Make sure you get all the mail for root
    • SSHGuard
    • Apticron
    • Logwatch
    • Stop services you won’t use
    • Harden
  • 10. Lets Encrypt
    • Securing the Sentora Control Panel with LetsEncrypt
    • Certificates for individual domains
  • 11. Becoming a Spam Ninja
    • I thought spam was dead!
    • What is Spam
    • Anti-Spam Legislation
    • Use your brain!
    • Postfix
    • If it smells like spam and looks like spam…
  • 12. Data Hygiene and Bad Habits you can just avoid.
    • duckduckgo.com
    • TOR
    • LastPass
    • OK is not OK
    • Antivus doesn’t help much
  • Appendix A. Known Issues and Workarounds
  • Appendix B. Important Files and Useful Commands
    • Web and Mail Server
  • References
  • Notes

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