Providing SSH tunnling, what to think about when configuring Ubuntu Server

Posted by bigbadonk420 on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by bigbadonk420
Published on 2012-12-17T18:28:00Z Indexed on 2012/12/17 23:14 UTC
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Recently I've considered, mostly as a pet project, to set up accounts for a closed group of users via SSH to my box with the purpose of SSH tunnling things like web traffic -- some of it for friends that live abroad and perhaps also to help some people bypass national censorship. There's some things I imagine that I need to do, such as:

  • Disabling shell access by setting the shell to /bin/false or similar.
  • Get some software that can track bandwidth usage on a per-user basis historically
  • Make sure that each user can only use a certain amount of bandwidth.

The reason I'm posting here to begin with is to look around and get some pointers regarding what kind of things I should read up on, as well as hearing if there are any software recommendations for doing what I'm trying to do. I already know a bit since I've actually gotten SSH tunnling up and running already, I just don't feel like letting it loose to other people without restrictions and some basic monitoring.

I'm primarily trying to learn here, so if you think this is a Very Bad Idea (or if you have a better idea on how to do this) then by all means say so, but please include some information on how to do it :)

(I'm also open to trying things like OpenVPN but it seems really hard to set up, also I've heard SSH more often works in locked down environments)

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