Mar 24, 2007 Explanation of Secure Password Generation. Mar 24, 2007. Relies upon a common pre-shared key ('psk' - get it??) to initialize the communication. In the meantime, there are websites devoted to telling you how to generate random keys at home, as well as some sites that generate various WEP keys for you. This page will generate a wpa-psk. Serial Key Generator. Serial Key Generator is a program to help developers generate serial numbers for applications. You can generate serial keys using a custom number of columns and characters per column. The sequence of numbers/digits can be defined in the application. The output can be saved as CSV or TXT documents.
- Select the size of the key you would like to generate. I've preselected the best size for you.
- Hit the 'generate' button. Your random key will appear in the text box.
- Select the random key (click on the box and type [cntrl-a]) and copy it to yourclipboard [cntrl-c]. Be sure you select the entire key!
- Paste [cntrl-v] this key into the configuration screens for both your wireless basestationand your wireless client.
- Enjoy your new life of ease and security.
What good is a fancy new wireless encryption and authentication system (wpa-psk)if you use an easy-to-guess passphrase?
Answer: Not very good. WPA, as part of the initial implementation of 802.11i, includesa host of new features designed to patch the gaping holes in the previous wireless encryption and authentication protocol, WEP. Wpa-psk, the less secure version of WPA for those of us who do not have a PEAP authentication server, relies upon a common pre-shared key ('psk' - get it??) to initialize the communication.
Unfortunately, a clever hacker can trick your wireless basestation into revealingthe initial handshake between your basestation and wireless clients, and then run abrute-force/dictionary attack on the handshake to recover the pre-shared key. Even worse, theattack can be done offline at a high rate of speed.
The upshot: While wpa-psk will keep out casual wardrivers, a determined intruder, givenenough time, can always hack into your network. If you use a poor passphrase (like, oh, 'passphrase'), a dictionary attack could render your wpa-psk useless in 30 seconds. Your goal,then, is to use a sufficiently strong password that would require an intruder to spend years(given today's computing power) to brute-force your passphrase. And, frankly, if you have data thatpeople would spend years trying to obtain, then perhaps you should look elsewhere for somestronger security.
In the meantime, there are websites devoted to telling you how to generate random keys athome, as well as some sites that generate various WEP keys for you. This page will generatea wpa-psk of whatever size you like, safely and securely. (Plus you don't have to roll a diea couple hundred times.)
How does this page work?
![Linksys pre shared key Linksys pre shared key](https://phonexicum.github.io/resources/TLS-handshake-preshared-keys.png)
This page uses the javascript functions built into your web browser to generate a random password for you. If you want to see the code for yourself, find your browser's'view-source' menu item.
Importantly, using javascript, all of the computational work for key generation takes place on your own computer. Microsoft office online key generator. No-one but you knows what random key you got. It is not sent across the internet and there is no way for me (or anyone else) to record your key.
Compare a few other sites on the internet, wherethe actual key generation takes place on their webserver and they transmit the keyto you (hopefully over a secure connection). If you use one of these services, your keyis only as secure as your trust for their webservers.
Note: The code for key generation is based upon that distributed freely by the kindfolks at WarewolfLabs.
Introduction
Static key configurations offer the simplest setup, and are ideal for point-to-point VPNs or proof-of-concept testing.
Static Key advantages
- Simple Setup
- No X509 PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) to maintain
Static Key disadvantages
- Limited scalability — one client, one server
- Lack of perfect forward secrecy — key compromise results in total disclosure of previous sessions
- Secret key must exist in plaintext form on each VPN peer
- Secret key must be exchanged using a pre-existing secure channel
Simple Example
This example demonstrates a bare-bones point-to-point OpenVPN configuration. A VPN tunnel will be created with a server endpoint of 10.8.0.1 and a client endpoint of 10.8.0.2. Encrypted communication between client and server will occur over UDP port 1194, the default OpenVPN port.
Generate a static key:
Copy the static key to both client and server, over a pre-existing secure channel.
Server configuration file
Client configuration file
Firewall configuration
Make sure that:
- UDP port 1194 is open on the server, and
- the virtual TUN interface used by OpenVPN is not blocked on either the client or server (on Linux, the TUN interface will probably be called tun0 while on Windows it will probably be called something like Local Area Connection n unless you rename it in the Network Connections control panel).
Bear in mind that 90% of all connection problems encountered by new OpenVPN users are firewall-related.
Testing the VPN
Run OpenVPN using the respective configuration files on both server and client, changing myremote.mydomain in the client configuration to the domain name or public IP address of the server.
To verify that the VPN is running, you should be able to ping 10.8.0.2 from the server and 10.8.0.1 from the client.
Expanding on the Simple Example
Use compression on the VPN link
Add the following line to both client and server configuration files:
Make the link more resistent to connection failures
Deal with:
- keeping a connection through a NAT router/firewall alive, and
- follow the DNS name of the server if it changes its IP address.
Add the following to both client and server configuration files:
Run OpenVPN as a daemon (Linux/BSD/Solaris/MacOSX only)
Run OpenVPN as a daemon and drop privileges to user/group nobody.
Add to configuration file (client and/or server):
Allow client to reach entire server subnet
Suppose the OpenVPN server is on a subnet 192.168.4.0/24. Add the following to client configuration:
Generate Pre Shared Key online, free
Then on the server side, add a route to the server’s LAN gateway that routes 10.8.0.2 to the OpenVPN server machine (only necessary if the OpenVPN server machine is not also the gateway for the server-side LAN). Also, don’t forget to enable IP Forwarding on the OpenVPN server machine.