Set up a secure or encrypted FTP server.

209dude

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Aug 29, 2013
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My router is an Asus rt-ac66u

Does any one know a more secure way of accessing a FTP sever . Basically I want to access my FTP server without anyone (ISP or a admin of a free/open wifi hotspot, such as a library or hotel) knowing what is being sent back and forth. At the most all they need to see is data moving back and forth. The don't need to see what files are going back and forth. I sometime forget my work at home and need to be able to access it. Currently i put everything on a my portable hard drive and transfer that back and forth. I almost had it stolen once. A cop happened to see the thief take my laptop bag and stopped him before he got too far.

I have heard of SFTP or FTP ssh. I know those are secure/encrypted but clueless on how to set that up. Is that something I can do from my router or is there software that encrypts it while sending data back and forth.

I'm not a noob at this but I am not an expert either. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
I am going to bet not but they may offer the service.

Generally VPN services are used to either get around IP restrictions or monitoring of what you are doing by say the Chinese government. These encrypt your traffic from your PC to some location but after they leave that location and go to the internet the traffic is no longer encrypted. This is a outbound type connection. What you want is a inbound connection. Now a VPN service may allow you to connect your home to their service and then connect to them from a external PC and they hook this together. This would be similar to how some of the desktop sharing sites work like teamviewer for example. You would have to find one that did ftp or a raw vpn. Still the company...
You would not set up anything on the router just run something like openssh on you server instead of ftp. You could then use any of clients that can run ftp over ssh.

Now if you REALLY want to run something on the router there is now a release of dd-wrt that will run on that router. Since the router has a huge amount of memory you can load the biggest image that include the openvpn. This will allow you to build a full blown vpn tunnel to your network in your house so you could use even simple windows file sharing if you wanted.
 

209dude

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Aug 29, 2013
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You mentioned VPN service. I have a VPN service ( Private Internet Access.) I have the android app and Windows software. My router is also set up to connect to their VPN servers. I just don have it turned on. Will any of this work for privacy.
 
I am going to bet not but they may offer the service.

Generally VPN services are used to either get around IP restrictions or monitoring of what you are doing by say the Chinese government. These encrypt your traffic from your PC to some location but after they leave that location and go to the internet the traffic is no longer encrypted. This is a outbound type connection. What you want is a inbound connection. Now a VPN service may allow you to connect your home to their service and then connect to them from a external PC and they hook this together. This would be similar to how some of the desktop sharing sites work like teamviewer for example. You would have to find one that did ftp or a raw vpn. Still the company providing this service can see the data between the 2 vpn tunnels.

Your other option is to just use one of the many hosting services to store your data on the net. Most no longer use FTP because the general public has been told that "cloud storage" is the way to go like it is something new....Gee there have been secure FTP repositories for more than 10 years.
 
Solution