Easily secure your iPhone’s connection

When you’re out and about using your phone’s wifi connection to get net access, you should be concerned about your security. Just because the sites you visit are SSL doesn’t mean you’re safe. Just have a look at the tool SSLStrip. Even if you trust the hotspot, do you trust that no one is intercepting the traffic between you and the hot spot?

I discovered today it’s actually quite easy to setup a home VPN and have all your iPhone’s traffic run over it. All you need is a compatible router to run the dd-wrt firmware on.  dd-wrt actually does a lot of cool features.

  1. Install the dd-wrt vpn firmware to your router
  2. Get a dynamic hostname and setup software to update when your ip changes.  (If you don’t already have one)
  3. Configure dd-wrt to update your dynamic host name under Setup->DDNS
  4. Configure the PPTP server built into dd-wrt
    1. Services->VPN
    2. PPTP: Enable
    3. Broadcast Support: Enable
    4. Force MPPE Encryption: Enable
    5. Server IP: 0.0.0.0
    6. Client IP: 192.168.1.151-175
    7. CHAP-Secrets: YourMadeUpUserName * YourMadeUpPassword *
  5. Setup VPN in iPhone
    1. Under Settings->General->Network->VPN->Add VPN
    2. PPTP
    3. Description: Home
    4. Server: yourdynamichostname.dyndns.org
    5. Account: YourMadeUpUserName
    6. Password: YourMadeUpPassword
    7. Encryption Level: Maximum
    8. Send All Traffic: ON
    9. Proxy: Off
    10. Save
    11. Slide VPN to ON
  6. You should see a little icon in the upper left that says VPN when you’re connected.  You can verify the vpn is working by going to www.whatismyip.com which should display your IP from home

The above was done with dd-wrt v24-sp2.

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