openvpn abuse

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everfresh1
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Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:28 pm

openvpn abuse

Post by everfresh1 » Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:31 pm

Hi.
I have received a warning from my datacenter that one of my user has downloaded / uploaded Columbia Picture's movie .
Movie name is "The Tourist" .

my datacenter is going to disable my servers.

Please someone give me idea how can i prevent someone from doing such things ?
And what is solution for this ?

Thank you very much in advance.

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Bebop
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Re: openvpn abuse

Post by Bebop » Tue Mar 22, 2011 8:16 pm

everfresh1 wrote: And what is solution for this ?
Good question. Thinking about it now, what do you see as being your available options. I can see two realistic options.

(i) Real-time traffic monitor. When client is doing bad behavior, the system will cut client connection (with IPTABLES or certificate revocation).

(ii) Logging. When your datacenter notifies you of a bad behavior from client, you sort through traffic logs (if you keep traffic logs), and ban the user manually. Report back to the datacenter that you have terminated the client's account.

Ideally, you would want to have both methods in place. Real-time monitor would be useful for high-risk activity such as DOS and PORTSCAN attack detection. Logging would be useful for copyright infringements. If you value your client's privacy, then you might want to log in a way which doesn't link to their real IP.
The cure for boredom is curiosity

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janjust
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Re: openvpn abuse

Post by janjust » Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:28 am

if you cannot trust your vpn users then you're in bad shape.
for a rogue vpn user it is always possible to upload/download material that they are not supposed to. Bebop's suggestion to use logging is the best (legal) approach: find out who uploaded the file (check for abnormal peak usage of the network) and ban the user. Tell the data centre you've taken action.

A skilled , rogue VPN user can almost always find a way to upload/download stuff - it's very hard to prevent this from happening. All you can do is log it and ban the user afterwards.

Remember that OpenVPN is about enabling connectivity, not about restricting it. That's a whole different ballgame,

everfresh1
OpenVpn Newbie
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:28 pm

Re: openvpn abuse

Post by everfresh1 » Wed Mar 23, 2011 8:05 am

Thank you very much for very usefull replies.
The client had used BitTorrent to download / upload the Columbia Picture's movie "The Tourist" .
As per the data center rules and Columbia picture's they also can take a very serious action against me.

I have disable both incomming and out going traffic for BitTorrent port range.
Could you please tell me how do i enable logging ? And where to see it ? In which file ?

Is there any documentation for logging ?

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Bebop
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Re: openvpn abuse

Post by Bebop » Wed Mar 23, 2011 9:28 am

everfresh1 wrote:Is there any documentation for logging ?
Check this site for some networking tools to help you get the job done: http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/networktools1.htm

Unless one of the experts can help you further, I think you might be on your own from here for this one.
The cure for boredom is curiosity

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