If you crave for privacy and wish to protect your communications (like chat and email) from prying eyes, this is how dynamic port forwarding can turn SSH into a SOCKS proxy server.

The idea is to forward all traffic from @unsecure to @secure location via SSH and then use Internet from @secure location.

To set up a proxy run

ssh -C -D 1080 user@SecureLocation.com

-C enables compression
-D 1080 runs dynamic port forwarding on port 1080

After you connect to secure location, edit browser, email or chat SOCKS proxy settings, pointing them to ‘localhost:1080‘ and use your apps without worrying of being snooped.

How to rsync files between two servers when remote server uses an RSA key for authentication.

Format:
rsync $options $host:$from $to

rsync -avz -e "ssh -i key.rsa" \
user@domain.com:/var/www /var/www/backup

The ‘-avz’ options are used for creating archive, being verbose and compressing the file transfer.

‘-e “$command”‘ specifies the shell command to use; in this case calling the SSH RSA key used for authentication

Until recently there was no reason for me to share my personal encryption keys between multiple computers. So, naturally, I got stuck when I tried to import keys I use at work to my home computer.

I use GnuPG http://www.gnupg.org/ for signing my emails. GnuPG can be used for encryption as well but I do not use this feature that much. When signing emails, I tend to create a key for every email account that I have. It is just a silly rule that I have :)

So, this is the procedure to create and copy encryption keys from one computer to another.

Start key generation and set encryption details:

$ gpg --gen-key
1
4096
0
y

Set personal details such as name, email address, comment and key password:

Haris
email@domain.com
comment goes here
o

To list generated keys, type:

$ gpg --list-keys

Now, export secret and public keys into human readable files:

$ gpg --export-secret-keys -a -o private.key "Haris "
$ gpg --export -a -o public.key "Haris "

These two keys can now be copied to another computer and imported there:

$ gpg --import private.key
$ gpg --import public.key

After the import you have to set the trust level for the key:

$ gpg --edit-key "Haris "
trust
5
quit

If for any reason you need to delete your keys do this:

$ gpg --delete-secret-keys "Haris "
$ gpg --delete-keys "Haris "