Connecting to OpenVPN from behind (quite) any firewall through Port 80

This little how-to will show you, how to connect to your vpn through a firewall on port 80 (mostly not locked, as else no web access was possible)

Requirements:

• Endian Firewall
• Basic Configuration Knowledge
  

Steps before you leave home:

1. Login to your Endian Firewall Web Interface
2. Go to the "Firewall"-Tab and click on "Port Forwarding" in the menu, at your left
3. Add a new Rule with following properties:
   • Port on Red: 80
   • Destination IP: <IP of your firewall> (ex. 192.168.0.15)
   • Destination Port: <Port which your openvpn server listens to>
   • Click on Add, an voila
4. Go to the "VPN"-Tab and click on "Openvpn Server" in the menu at your left
5. Change protocol to "TCP" (UDP might work, please report if it does)
6. Click on the edit option of your openvpn user
7. In the section "Client Routing" activate the "use firewall as default gateway" checkbox
8. Save and done!
   

Steps when your at a club and urgently need some very private files from your local network at home:

1. Change the Settings of your openvpn client

1. Using Endian VPN-Client:
   • Click on "Properties"
   • Select the "Profile" you want to use
   • Click on the "Advanced" tab
   • Port: 80
   • Protocol: TCP (UDP might work as well, though haven't tried)
2. Manual configuration of the vpn.conf file
   1. Look for the line beginning with 'remote' and change it like this:
      < remote myhost.com 119
      > remote myhost.com 80
   2. Look for the line beginning with 'proto' and change it like this (again, udp might work as well):
      < proto udp
      > proto tcp

Click connect and hope the best

For Mac Users

We're kinda used to this things, that mac os x always has to do things differently and in a "smarter" way, so of course this applies to the DNS resolution as well. In OS X each "Location" may have different dns entries which are managed by a daemon called lookupd. This daemon simply ignores any manual changes to /etc/resolv.conf, so we can't set the firewall as dns server.

To bypass this problem, execute the following steps:

1. Open "System Preferences.app"
2. Select the "Network" option
3. Choose the "Location" and "Device" you're connected to the Internet with
4. Enter the IP of your firewall as dns server entry in "DNS-Server"
5. Click on "Apply" on you're done!
6. Enjoy the World Wide Web with no port locks what so ever!