CyberDiary Update December 2024

This week I created a private gitea instance on one of my domains kestroscyber

(No longer using)

I have decided to put off studying for the OSCP and instead learn more python and build a site using python and flask. I have purchased the domain and have a general map layed out for what I plan on doing. It will be a pet supplies site that scrapes prices from various sites and presents the user with the lowest price found for the selected pet supply item. I will use affiliate links with the site and hopefully I will make some money.

Operating System

Linux Mint Deban Edition (LMDE)

IDE

I mainly use codium now.

Word Processor / Documents

LibreOffice. Recently I rewrote my Resume using LaTeX and learning the syntax from Luke Smith’s youtube channel.

e-mail

I use Thunderbird with Fastmail. I have hosted my own e-mail server in the past using Vultr but they unexpectedly ceased allowing SMTP and SMTPS ports to be opened. I had an impossible time trying to find another VPS provider that allows self-hosting an e-mail server. People claimed that Hetzner allow this after a one month waiting period but I was denied when I opened tickets requesting the ports opened. There are a couple other ones that people claim allow it but their ip blocks are likely blacklisted from spam abuse anyway so there would be no point in doing that if nobody even would get my e-mails. It is against the terms of service of my ISP to host an e-mail server out of my house unless I were to pay for a business account. So I am stuck using Fastmail currently for my e-mail with a custom domain. If anyone knows a different solution please let me know.

Introduction

Commercial VPN providers often track and then sell your internet activity to advertisers, marketers, and data brokers. Some VPN providers say they do not keep logs or spy on you, (Mullvad), but there is no way to know if that is true (unless you can somehow audit them yourself). Creating your own VPN server that you have complete control of is cheaper and gives you more privacy than paying for a VPN service from a company.

Why?

When researching topics in cybersecurity, large language models like ChatGPT censor a lot.

So, we can host our own that is uncensored and it will help us learn things more efficiently.

You can rent a powerful $7,000 GPU at RunPod for $0.90 an hour. You can start and stop the machine on demand and only get charged for the time you are using it.

You can now reach this site through the Tor Browser at:
http://37h4dzh25umqh3xnavapw6fe5uoiqc56i4qfjdb2m32hb5ziicy2zpid.onion/

The following instructions are assuming you are using Debian 12. You may need to do things slightly different if you are using another Debian based distro.

First, you need to ssh into your server and ensure your CPU architecture is supported. It has to be amd64, arm64, or i386.