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I have a personal VPN running OpenVPN 2.3.10 on ubuntu 16.04 that I installed following this guide. It has worked with a few hiccups over the last two months of intermittent use.

Yesterday, I tried to go to Reddit on my MacBook (OS X 10.14.1) using Safari and I get an error saying that OpenDNS is filtering forums for my IP address. I get various "unsecured connection" warnings and other warnings about potential man-in-the-middle attacks, too, from websites I have never visited before . So it isn't likely I have just set some funny exceptions to security for Reddit that have now expired. It isn't all websites, but I can't figure out a pattern except for the ones that are filtered explicitly for some reason.

The VPN is running on a computer on a network with regular users (i.e. their own computers) that have no problems reaching Reddit (or the other websites). So the problem is likely with the VPN itself. For instance, it is not the case that OpenDNS is actually blocking traffic to my IP because all users of the network have the same IP facing the internet and they don't have problems.

A user within the network (also using a MacBook) has no issues reaching Reddit (he uses Firefox, in case it matters) while using the network normally. If he connects to the VPN from within the network he has the same problems I do. I have iOS devices that use the VPN too, and they also have this problem. I can also use VPN Unlimited without this problem, further indicating this is a problem with my VPN and (maybe) Apple devices.

Digging around for solutions to this problem I found this website telling me to add a certificate called Cisco Umbrella "Root CA" to my keychain and then set it to "Always Trusted." This appears to have fixed the filtering problem on my MacBook. Edit: this isn't true, I don't know why it appeared to work for a while, but it doesn't anymore.

Since all of the devices I have had issues with are Apple products, I guess that Apple has pushed some kind of security update recently that has caused this problem, but it is also pretty likely something expired on my VPN. I'd like to know why this is happening all of a sudden and if there is a change I can make to the VPN server to fix it for all my devices.

Finncent Price
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1 Answers1

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In the guide to setting up OpenVPN, step 7 (configuring the OpenVPN service), they have you push OpenDNS as your DNS service. I changed these to my ISP's DNS servers (and Google's) and this appears to have fixed the problem. Where the guide says to use

push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.222.222"
push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.220.220"

comment these out with a ; in front of each and add a push "dhcp-option DNS W.X.Y.Z" for each DNS server you want to use, where W.X.Y.Z is your ISP provided DNS server. I have three and it works. I suppose OpenDNS recently updated its policies because I had been using their DNS for months without issues until recently.

In case that website goes down, the file you edit is server.conf. I had put that file in /etc/openvpn but yours might not be there. I then rebooted the server and the internet is no longer being filtered.

Finncent Price
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  • 5