SSH Remote Access NO Port-Forwarding NO Cloudflare

In this article I will show you how I securely connect to my remote machines without having to configure port forwarding.

Requirements:

1. A computer “server” (running linux)
2. A internet connection
3. Another computer to connect to your server (running linux)

Why?

If you want to access your server without portforwarding in a extremely secure fashion you will want to follow this tutorial. You will be connecting to the server via tor which will make it harder for anyone to find the url of the server and ill show you how to setup keybased auth for even more security!

Setup

You will have to install the following packages (ssh, tor)

On debian

sudo apt install openssh-client

On arch

sudo pacman -S openssh

After that enable the ssh service

Debian:

sudo systemctl enable ssh

Arch:

sudo systemctl enable sshd

If you want to check if this worked just use another computer and run

ssh USER@IP

for example I run

ssh arkal@192.168.1.69

After this you can enable KeyBased authentication for more security

Here is my article how to enable that :

Enable keybased authentication

Now we need to install tor:

On debian

sudo apt install tor

On arch

sudo pacman -S tor

Then start and enable the tor service with

sudo systemctl start tor && sudo systemctl enable tor

After you have done that you want to edit your torrc file. Using your favorite text editor

sudo vim /etc/tor/torrc

Now you will want to navigate to the part that says HiddenService. And paste the following

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/ssh/
HiddenServicePort 22 127.0.0.1:22

Save your file and exit the editor (for nano cntrl s, cntrl x)

Now you want will have to restart the tor service

sudo systemctl restart tor

After that run the following:

sudo cat /var/lib/tor/ssh/hostname

You should see a string of letters and characters ending in .onion

Now on your other machine:

Connecting to the server

On your main machine you will have to do the following:

Have ssh, tor, and socat installed

After you have installed them you will have to edit the ssh config

vim .ssh/config

And paste the following

Host NAME
 Hostname URL.onion
 User USER
 Port 22
 Proxycommand socat - SOCKS4A:127.0.0.1:%h:%p,socksport=9050

You will have to change the NAME, URL and USER. The user is the user you want to connect as to your server and the url is the url you that ends in .onion from above.

Now save the file and exit.

Now edit the torrc file. Using your favorite text editor:

vim /etc/tor/torrc

Find the line that says SOCKSPort and uncomment it

SOCKSPort 9050

Restart the tor service

systemctl restart tor

To connect to the server run the following command:

ssh NAME

With NAME being the name that you gave to the server in the config file.

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