Accessing a NAS securely

jhonrox

jhonrox

New Member
Hi guys,

I recently got a NAS enclosure and added a 1TB hdd to it, to make my files accessible for 2 other computers in my home network. The NAS has inbuilt SMB, FTP, BT, and Media Server, and also an administration page to manage all these settings. Everything is working fine in the local network and I can use the admin page by using 192.168.x.y.

However, I wanted to do this remotely and so gave the NAS a static ip and did all the necessary port-forwarding on the router. I can now access it (the admin page) via the internet when I enter my public-ip:port, after entering the username and password, of course. But I always get asked if I want to continue as the details will be send as 'plain text'.

So, could someone help me make this connection secure? I read a bit about VPN

In a nutshell -- a VPN is a method of connecting private networks together over a public network.. For example the internet. You have a network at your home, you have a network at work.. You use a VPN to create a secure connection between these networks over a unsecured network (internet). This "tunnel" if you can use any of different methods to secure the private traffic from the unsecured public network.. This could be SSL, this could be ipsec, L2TPv3, etc.
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/622491-vpn-to-nas/
Click to expand...

and I know my router supports it (Linksys WRT54GS), but I don't know anything else?

Any help will be very much appreciated. The NAS won't be left switched on 24/7 and nor will it have any sensitive data stored in it, but I would still like it to be secure. We are still talking about the admin page by the way. Would it be possible to make remote FTP access secure as well? Or does the NAS have to have inbuilt SFTP?

Thanks!
 
D

donadoni

New Member
your within a private network so unless your worried someone within your house will steal your password you have nothing to worry about.
 
jhonrox

jhonrox

New Member
Vampiric Rouge said:
Yes if you set up a VPN with security your traffic will be encapsulated and secure.
Click to expand...

Thanks for confirming this Vampiric Rouge. Would it be possible to give me further information on setting up a VPN? As I said, I don't have a clue about it!

And thanks for answering donadoni's post for me! :)
 
Vampiric Rouge

Vampiric Rouge

New Member
It's really up to you how you want to do it. One of the first things is keeping track of your public IP address. Do you currently have it set up with a dynamic DNS account somewhere? Also are you using the default firmware/OS for your Linksys WRT54GS? From there you can either look to see if the Linksys WRT54GS has a built in VPN server or you can Google for an open source one to install on your computer/OS of choice. When configuring your VPN server it will allow you to select your security of choice, for most uses any of them will be fine.
 
jhonrox

jhonrox

New Member
Yeah I've been monitoring my IP address for some time now, and it has never changed. Which means I haven't had to use any dynamic dns services. And yes, I am using the default firmware on my router, and even though there is a section for VPN, there is no mention of servers. Have a look at the screenshot:

Screenshot2010-03-08at212245.png


So, you think I should find a third-party firmware?
 
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